


seven minutes in heaven

by bluesxrgent



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Angst, Bipolar Disorder, Drug Use, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Strangers to Lovers, did someone say idiots to lovers?, if shakespeare could mention clocks in julius caesar i can pretend to know what i'm talking about, if this is anachronistic at times don't come for me, pining to the max man, repressed feelings galore, set in the eighties, these characters are stupid and will make stupid decisions a lot, this au is loosely based on daisy jones and the six if u know what that is, this is elu centric but other relationships will play a fairly big part too, uhhh how do i even begin, we'll touch on some heavy topics but i'll always give tws at the beginning of chapters!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 232,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23125912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluesxrgent/pseuds/bluesxrgent
Summary: Eliott Demaury is the son of Hollywood royalty, but he's lost in his own life. Lucas Lallemant is no one from nowhere, but he knows what he wants and will do anything to get there. If not for music, the two might never have even met.Thirty years after their notorious split, the members of the 80′s rock legend that was the band Seven Minutes in Heaven open up about the events that shot them to stardom, the ones that broke them apart at the height of their fame, and everything in between.aka an eighties rockband au, in the simplest terms
Relationships: Eliott Demaury/Lucas Lallemant
Comments: 252
Kudos: 276





	1. Track 1: Eliott Demaury - Summer 1975 to Winter 1980

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello hello !! i'm back with another au and i'm v excited for this one :)))
> 
> the world is kinda a mess right now and i think we all need some sort of distraction, so i hope i can help with that <33
> 
> i'm aiming for weekly updates because i have a few chapters written already and i'd love to be consistent for once but if that doesn't happen feel free to say i told you so 😳 
> 
> as stated in the tags, this is an elu fic, but i wanted a really well rounded story so a lot of the other characters/relationships will have their time to shine as well because i love them all too much (except charles, he can choke, don't expect me to ever write him in a flattering manner lol)
> 
> there will be some heavy stuff mentioned throughout, but i'll always give trigger warnings at the beginnings of chapters and i just wanna put as a disclaimer that i am not under any circumstances romanticizing some of the rougher subjects addressed
> 
> i'm also not saying that i've written and have the intention of recording/producing some music for this fic but i'm also not not saying that... i can't help my art student nature sound design hits different 
> 
> one last note: this is written/told in interview format (like an audio transcript/documentary of sorts) because the book i based this au idea on was written in that format and i loved the style so much i wanted to try it myself so i hope you like it !! (and speaking of the book i based this on, it's called daisy jones and the six, and it's one of my favorite books of all time, go read it. this au won't follow the storyline past some basic plot details/ character dynamics, but i just wanted to put that out there)
> 
> ok anyway, that's enough notes, happy reading !! i hope you enjoy !! 
> 
> tw for this chapter: mentions of manic/depressive episodes, bipolar disorder, mentions of drug use/alcohol

**Interviewer’s Note:**

_The following audio transcript provides a comprehensive timeline of the rise and fall of the band “Seven Minutes in Heaven”, and this marks the first time any of the band members have ever spoken publicly about all the events leading up to their infamous and shocking split in the late eighties. Some interviewees were more forthcoming than others, some declined to speak on the matters at all, and everyone has a different side to every story, but what else can be expected from a group of some of the most famous and talented artists of the twentieth century?_

**Ingrid Spielman (author,** **_Decoding Demaury_ ** **):**

The first thing you have to know about Eliott Demaury is that he’s always been an enigma. Even those who knew him best never really knew him at all, at least from what I can gather. He grew up in decadence, the son of two of the biggest Hollywood starlets of the time, Carlotta Kline and Jacques Demaury. Born in the heart of Hollywood but raised in France, Eliott Demaury was a boy born to break hearts and make people fall in love with a single glance. By the time he moved back to the City of Angels in 1975, at the age of fourteen, everyone already knew that he was _it_ , even if he didn’t know himself. 

What most people don’t know is that he moved back to America alone, armed with a trust fund and desire for the validation he’d never received from his parents, too busy with their own lives to pay him any attention at all. 

I’m sure we’ve all heard the stories of his tumultuous relationships with men and women alike, each and every one of them ending as disastrously as it had started. Eliott Demaury was known for wearing his heart on his sleeve, then setting it on aflame when he got bored, and everyone _adored_ him for it. Maybe if he were anyone else, he wouldn’t have gotten away with it, but Eliott Demaury was, in the simplest terms, a god come to life, so he could do whatever with whoever and there was always someone else who would come running if he so much as breathed in their direction. 

This isn’t to say Demaury was a player, no, it has been said that he was just a boy with his heart on fire, burning too fast and bright for anyone to catch up. His many lovers called themselves his ‘flames’ for this reason, stoking the coals in his heart, but never quite escaping without burning up. What Eliott Demaury needed was ice, because in the end fighting fire with fire only led to destruction on both ends.

This was why, when fourteen year old Eliott Demaury moved to Los Angeles, the city lost its damn mind. It started slowly at first, he’d hang around the coolest spots in the city until he found the right groups to roll with, but then he’d find his way in the middle of the hottest clubs and bars all over the city. No one knew he was fourteen, but it wouldn’t have changed much if they did. 

Eliott Demaury changed the course of music history by coming back to America, even if he didn’t know it then, and the world is so much richer for it.

**Eliott Demaury (vocalist, “Le Premier” and “Polaris”):**

I never really intended on being ‘Eliott Demaury’ before I was old enough to know what that meant. What goes into a name, really, and why does something simple as that give some people more power over other people? 

No one in LA knew who Eliott Demaury was, by any means, even if they did know Jacques and Carlotta. Their fame had mostly diminished by the time I returned to the states, choosing to live out their lives in excess somewhere they could pretend they were still better than everyone else. I’m not even sure they noticed I was gone.

I had enough money to get myself started in LA, though, even as a fourteen year old, which I realize sounds insane as I’m saying it now. I didn’t know any better back then, what fourteen year old does? All I wanted was a chance to find myself, and find myself I did, for better or for worse.

That part came much later, though. I’m afraid that this part of the story… I wouldn’t believe most of it myself if I hadn’t lived it. If I hadn’t found Idriss, I’m not sure I would have made it out alive, and I mean that sincerely.

**Idriss Bakhellal (actor,** **_Life is Now_ ** **):**

I was eighteen when I met Eliott Demaury in 1975. He was a mess, a complete fucking mess. I’m not sure he was even living anywhere in particular when I met him, hopping between five star hotels using money I can only assume he got from his parents. I don’t know why no one ever questioned him, because he was a minor, but the name Demaury was more important than ethics, apparently. 

Funny how the same could probably still be said today, but about Eliott rather than his parents, huh? 

I met him because we frequented the same bars. Me, on the weekends, him, almost every night. As far as I know, before we met, he never got up to the things that the people around him got up to, at least not that young, but I’m sure there are some stories that would surprise me.

**Eliott Demaury:**

No, I wasn’t doing the things my “friends” did. At least not at that point in my life. I went to the bars every night for the music, stupid as that sounds. Doesn’t quite match the reputation, does it? 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

So, sure, I’d seen him around before we officially met, and I had no idea how young he was just by looking at him mind you, but I never in a million years thought that he’d become my best friend. 

I was the same as everyone else in that city, lost and looking for my slice of fame. I’d done a couple acting gigs, but no one in the industry took me seriously enough to take a chance on me, and I was actually real close to giving up the night that I met him for real. I’d booked an audition but it was obvious the director already had their favorites and they were just humoring me for the sake of ‘diversity’. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I met Idriss on a random weeknight at The Palace— that’s the name of the bar— and I’d seen him around there and a few other places before, but never during the week. He didn’t look much older than me, which is maybe why I decided to go talk to him. I’m not really sure, to be honest, but he looked lonely, and I was lonely too, despite being surrounded by dozens of people every single night.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

The image you have in your head of Eliott right now, the one of him up on stage bringing men and women to their knees with his high notes and tight jeans, the rockstar, rebel without a cause? Throw that shit away.

_(Idriss laughs)_

Eliott Demaury was and is a fifteenth century poet at heart, the kind that writes sonnets about the moon because he can’t help but be enamoured by her beauty every single night. Is the fifteenth century the right time frame? Fuck if I know, I was trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about, but rest assured: Eliott Demaury is the most hopelessly romantic person I’ve ever met in my life. I swear I saw him fall in love with a door handle once.

Now that that’s out of the way, I bring your attention to June 25th, 1975. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I approached Idriss, he was sitting alone at a table, drinking nothing but a glass of water. He was beautiful, I noticed that right away, but I never told him that. He didn’t notice me until I sat down next to him, which surprised me. I was used to people noticing me from miles away. I kind of liked that he wasn’t paying attention.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I noticed him. You’d have to be blind not to. I just thought it looked cooler to pretend I hadn’t.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I’d been shy, back in France, but I’d decided when I came to Los Angeles that version of me was going to be left in the past, and for the most part it had been. Even so, no one that I hung out with knew me, the real me. They knew the outgoing version of myself I liked to wear as a mask to fit in, but they didn’t know anything about me aside from my name and the weight it carried. 

I didn’t say anything when I sat down next to Idriss, out of character for this new version of me, but I think it was because, for some reason, I wanted to impress him. I figured if we were both lonely, maybe we could be lonely together.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

He didn’t say anything, just sat there, and I felt these waves of sadness roll off him. I’m not sure if he even knew that I felt them, but that was why I finally looked up at him and introduced myself. 

The minute I did, I finally saw that he was just a kid. We both were, really, but eighteen seemed so much older than however old he was in that moment.

“I’m Eliott,” he said, so excited to introduce himself. I noticed he didn’t give me his last name, and it felt like a deliberate choice. I knew who he was, of course, but if he wanted to keep that part of himself hidden, I was more than willing to let him. I didn’t need him toting his parents celebrity status in my face when I was feeling so defeated anyway. 

I remember asking him how old he was, and I was laughing because he looked like a puppy in search of a home, all wide eyed with that big old grin of his. But then he frowned, his eyes lost that glow, and he said, “Fifteen,” in the most pathetically small voice I’d ever heard.

**Eliott Demaury:**

It was my birthday. My fifteenth birthday. It was the first one I’d ever spent on my own, and I don’t think I’d realized until that moment that it would probably be the first of many. Idriss looked at me like— I don’t even know— not like he pitied me, because I don’t think he had it in him to pity me, but more like he understood. I think that was when I knew Idriss was going to be someone really important to me.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

First of all, that had not been what I was expecting, both the age and the tone of voice. Second of all, for some reason I had this instant urge to protect this kid from all the people he thought were his friends but were probably just using him for his name and his pretty face. So I told him why I was there, that I was an actor, or at least I wanted to be, but that I was pretty sure that dream was ending.

He looked startled, asked me why I was giving up on my dream, and I didn’t really have a concrete answer. I told him about all my struggles in the industry and the audition I had coming up the next day. I’d gone to the bar to get pissed and hopefully sleep through my audition in the morning, but I hadn’t quite worked up the nerve yet. 

Eliott just looked at me like I was insane, then at the glass of water on the table. Before I knew it, he was calling the bartender over and ordering us shots, and I panicked. 

“What? What’s wrong? Wasn’t this your plan all along?” he asked me, because that little shit knew what he was doing. 

The bartender came back with four shots, and he just sat there staring at me, daring me to do them. His eyes, if you’re not careful, they hypnotize you, and that’s what happened to me that night for sure. Can’t say it was the last time it happened either. But he looked me in the eye, asking me if I _really_ wanted to give up on my dreams without saying a word, and I took a sip of my water.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I’ve been told I’m a bit stubborn.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Next thing I knew, he downed all four shots like no one’s business and spun me a story of Idriss Bakhellal, world famous actor who owed his fame to the fifteen year old boy he’d met in a bar that the boy was definitely too young to be in, because dreams were worth chasing and lives were worth living. 

Now, at that point I’d assumed he knew his way around alcohol, but it became clear within minutes that was not the case, and thus our dynamic was born. Him doing stupid things because he was an impuslive dreamer who couldn’t fathom the idea that no one else was quite the same, and me ready to pick up any pieces that fell because his impulsive dreaming was what landed me my breakout role.

Of course, neither of us knew that at the time, he was too drunk and I was a little bit too annoyed, but I took him home with me, asking him if I should call his parents. I knew who they were, of course, but I didn’t know they were in France, and that Eliott had no real home or family. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I vaguely remember saying something along the lines of not having parents, which he obviously knew was a lie, but he let me lie, and I decided I could trust him. Maybe that was a little hasty, but I’ve always seen the best in people, even when I probably shouldn’t have.

I was so drunk that night that I honestly don’t remember much, just bits and pieces from what Idriss has told me over the years, but apparently I’d made enough of an impact that Idriss decided that he trusted me too. Maybe not trusted, exactly, not yet, but I think he took a liking to me regardless. When I woke up in his apartment the next morning, he wasn’t there, but he’d left a note saying he was at his audition and for me to wait to leave until he got back.

It was barely anything, but it felt like home, all of a sudden, and Idriss and I lived there together after that. I don’t even think we ever had a conversation about it, he just gave me blankets for the couch and I made some dinner, and that was that.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Eliott Demaury is the worst cook I’ve ever met in my life. I swear I almost vomited when I came home from my audition and he’d made some soup. It’s soup, how the hell could he fuck up soup? But I ate it anyway, and told him about my day, my audition, and he seemed genuinely interested, and proud of me for some reason. 

He kept telling me “You’re gonna get that part, you’re gonna get that part,” and even though I didn’t believe him, I humored him enough that I started to have a bit of hope myself. That was Eliott’s forte, making people feel hopeful, like they could do anything they wanted to if only they tried. Maybe it was because no one had ever told him _no_ in his life, or maybe he was just optimistic, but he believed in other people so strongly that it was hard not to believe in yourself.

And he was right. I got the part.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Once Idriss got the role in the movie, everything changed again. He was shooting across the country, and I was keeping his place warm for him until he got home. Our place. I wouldn’t say we were great friends at that point, we more or less cohabitated, but he’d call every so often to fill me in on the details of his ‘movie star life’, as I called it, and I’d tell him how things were going at home.

I didn’t tell him everything, of course, and there’s still a lot I’m sure he doesn’t know to this day. When he was gone, when that slow stability I’d allowed back into my life vanished, I went a bit far in the opposite direction, started messing with things I’d been too scared to mess with before. I went to the bars every night with those same people who really didn’t care that I was fifteen and shouldn’t have been doing lines with them in the bathroom. Everyone was doing it, I convinced myself, and the high felt too good to care about any consequences it might’ve had, so I kept doing it. 

I probably should have just stayed home most nights, or gone to the movies like a normal kid my age, but I loved the live music at the bars more than anything, sometimes it made me feel higher than when I was doing coke and whatever else those groupies I hung around with had on them no matter the time or day.

Sometimes I dreamed that it was me up there, sometimes I was more than happy to just sit backstage and soak it all in.

Only a few of us really appreciated the bands, the music, the rest of them were just there for free drugs or to sleep with people that might one day be famous. A lot of people hung out with me for that reason too, but I was lonely, so I let them stay. Clara was the only one who was the same as me, yearning for something more, but not knowing what that was.

**Clara Patrick (singer):**

Yeah, I partied with Eliott Demaury back in the day, bragged about it all the time to my friends at school. They didn’t believe me at the time, but I’m sure they would now.

_(Clara laughs)_

I wouldn’t say we were friends. He and I sort of understood each other in ways the rest of the group didn’t, you know? Eliott and I were also both the young ones, I was fourteen when we met, I think he was fifteen or sixteen. I could tell we were both dreamers caught up in a whole world full of people capable of either crushing our dreams or making them come true. I dreamed of being a singer one day, being the voice singing out to all those drunk people at the bar, but I was way too scared to ever go for it. 

I don’t know how Eliott knew, I never told anyone I sang, and I never sang along to the songs the bands would play, even the ones I practiced in my closet at home when my parents were away.

One night after everyone else had passed out or left to go to another bar or club and it was just the two of us, he looked at me with those stunning blue eyes of his, and he said, “Sing for me.” 

Granted, he was probably high out of his mind and wasn’t asking _me_ , in particular, to sing for him, but it shocked me. I remember shaking my head at him laughing.

“I don’t sing,” I’d said, and he just looked at me like he knew that I did and wouldn’t take no for an answer. 

“Please?” he said, “I’ll sing with you.” And I just decided, fuck it. It was probably good that I was a little high too, otherwise I’d never have gone for it. The last band had cleared the stage a little while ago, and I just hoped the bar owner wouldn’t kick us off the stage, but Eliott had no such hesitations. 

He hopped up and pulled me onto the stage, not even caring that we had no band and that the rest of the people in the bar would probably blame us for disturbing the peace. I think someone yelled at us to get off the stage, but Eliott smiled at them, and that was that. 

He tested the microphones, then handed one to me, asking if I knew the song “Blackbird” by The Beatles. Of course I did, who didn’t know that song? He said it was one of his favorites, but he wasn’t sure anyone else knew it, and right then I realized that Eliott Demaury really lived in his own little world, but when it was him it didn’t seem like that much of a bad thing.

There was no music, just the two of us, Eliott tapping a beat to help me start, and I just went for it, sang like I did whenever I was alone. He barely sang along with me, harmonizing every once and awhile, but letting me take the spotlight. If I’d have been paying more attention, maybe I would have realized that he had the voice of an angel, but I was so focused on myself that night that I didn’t notice. 

I think maybe he knew that too, that I needed to be the one everyone noticed, and that’s why he held back. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

The night I sang with Clara was the first time in longer than I could remember that I allowed myself to do something because I wanted to. I wanted to sing, I wanted to see if I could make people feel things the way they made me feel things.

I asked her to sing with me because she was the only one left standing, and I’d seen her gazing wistfully at the bands on stage in the same way I always did, so I figured she wanted a chance to live out her dreams too. 

I choked a little bit on stage, though, and I practically just let her sing on her own. I didn’t know if I was doing it right, and she was amazing, so I didn’t want her night to be ruined because of me. 

**Clara Patrick:**

Turns out the head of Hollywood Records just so happened to be in the bar that night, and the next thing I knew I was signed with a contract for three albums. All because Eliott Demaury believed in me when I was too scared to believe in myself.

**Eliott Demaury:**

All I could think after that night was _that could have been me_ . I felt like a failure, and even though I was happy for Clara, a part of me still thought I deserved it more, that _I_ was the one who’d wanted to sing for everyone in the first place, so _I_ should have been the one with the record deal.

I slept with Clara that night too, and it wasn’t bad for my first time. I think it was her first time too, so I tried to make sure I was doing everything right, not taking advantage of her in any way. 

**Clara Patrick:**

It wasn’t my first time. Eliott was way more respectful than I’d expected him to be, not because I didn’t think he was a good guy, but in my experience good guys were only nice until they wanted something from you.

He probably could have been more assertive than he was, actually, but we were both fairly inexperienced, and maybe the other girls he’d slept with liked it softer than I did so he was just going based off what he already knew.

Either way, I can say that I slept with Eliott Demaury, which is almost as good as an Academy Award to some people. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I’m a fairly romantic person, but it was never romantic with Clara. I mean, we only slept together one time, but I’d fallen in love with people over far less than that in the past, and would continue to do so in the future.

_(Eliott laughs)_

I think we shared a special moment on stage, and I was curious about sex, and she seemed curious about me, so that was the extent to our thought process. Not everything has to be monumental, sometimes it just clicks.

Sorry if you were expecting something more, I know I have a lot of stories to live up to. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I was only gone for six months, but by the time I got back I swear to god Eliott was an entirely different person. It was subtle, though, I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been paying attention. 

It was harder _not_ to pay attention to him, I think.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I’d lived without any sort of stability for such a long time that it was just normal to me, but then when I had Idriss and out little makeshift home I relished in the stability it brought. I didn’t realize how affected I was by it until it was gone, even if only for half a year.

Idriss didn’t do drugs, didn’t like drugs, and I respected that. Well, for the most part. I knew he was religious, but I didn’t really know anything about religion and I didn’t want to sound insensitive by asking him, so for the most part I just kept that part of my life to myself and hoped he wasn’t very observant.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

You’d have to be an idiot not to know what Eliott was doing, even if he never brought any of it into our apartment. I thought that was nice and respectful of him, even though I didn’t know he was doing it intentionally at first.

I wanted to have a conversation with him about it, I really did, but I had no idea where to start. I wasn’t his father, if he wanted to snort whatever the fuck on Monday night and smoke whatever the fuck on Tuesday morning, that was his prerogative. But I also have a little sister, and even though her and Eliott aren’t all that similar, I know that I would never have forgiven myself if I’d stayed silent while she did even _half_ the things he did. 

At first I thought maybe he was just dumb, to be doing the things he did without a care, but that was quickly disproven. Eliott is smart, so smart in fact that I think a lot of people forget that he didn’t even go to school, at least not properly, his entire life. Aside from homeschooling in France, everything he learned, he learned because he wanted to, he’d sit in on classes at local universities just because he found astronomy fascinating or because he was high and wanted to know the secrets of the universe. He’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever known, actually, which is why nothing he did ever made sense to me. He knew better, I knew that he knew better, but nothing changed. 

It went on like that for a few years, even as my first movie came out, and I booked a few more roles, and I was starting to make a name for myself. I wouldn’t say that he stayed the same, because Eliott was never the same, always entirely unique, but he only distanced himself further and further from the boy I’d met that night at the bar.

**Eliott Demaury:**

By the time I was eighteen I’d probably tried so many drugs that listing them all now will make you wonder how the hell I’m still alive. I’m not sure myself. A stroke of luck, maybe? An exasperated fairy godmother watching over me? 

I knew I was on thin ice with Idriss, but he was so busy that we put off having real conversations over and over again. I’m not sure why he continued to put up with me, but he did, and I let him. I never met his family during that time though, and that’s how I knew that no matter how much he tolerated me, he didn’t trust me. I told myself I didn’t care, but the truth was that I cared too much. And when I cared too much, I got myself into trouble. 

I’m sure everyone is aware by now that I’m bipolar, and if you’re not, there it is. We didn’t have a direct diagnosis back in the day, mainly because of the stigma surrounding mental illness and my own unwillingness to seek such a thing, but I was officially diagnosed in the nineties and I like to think that I’ve advocated for people with mental illness over the years, but I admit I probably could do more. We all could. 

I had my first manic episode when I was eighteen, but I think everyone, myself included, thought it was just a side effect of all the drugs I was on. I admit I don’t remember much of it, Idriss is the one that has filled me in on some of the details over time, but in an odd way, my episode was what got me to get my shit together, at least a little bit.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I reacted really poorly when he had his first episode. Granted, I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time, but that’s no excuse. I still feel shitty about it to this day, even though Eliott’s assured me a million times over that he doesn’t blame me for anything.

See, I knew how to handle Eliott for the most part, I was figuring out his patterns and knew there was reasons behind the things he did, the alcohol, the drugs, the sex, but then he flipped the script completely, and I felt like I was losing him. 

I think I was mad at myself, mostly, because I’d been the only form of ‘authority’ in his life for the last three years, if I could even be called that, and I’d proven myself to be really terrible at it. It’s why I stayed away from my sister for a while too, because I didn’t want to make the same mistakes with her that I’d made with Eliott.

I kicked him out, even though I knew he had nowhere to go and every voice in my head was telling me that this was a stupid, stupid decison. It’s one of my biggest regrets, because I wasn’t there when he needed me, and we’d always had an unspoken promise to be there for each other.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Yeah. He kicked me out. It’s the one thing he and I don’t really ever talk about, because I know he still feels like shit about it and I know that I probably deserved worse for the things I did at that time, so we just let that part of the past stay in the past. Until now, I guess.

_(Eliott laughs uncomfortably)_

I’ve never been mad at him about it, even when my mania turned to depression. I was mad at myself for fucking things up, for not being able to control the things I did and why I did them. I just didn’t understand why I could feel so good one minute only to fall from the sky like Icarus when he flew too close to the sun. 

In the end, that space, it was good for us. I’m not sure we’d have the relationship we have if he hadn’t kicked me out, actually.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I regretted it the minute I said it, but Eliott didn’t seem to care one bit, leaving without so much as a backwards glance. He didn’t have many things to take with him, but he didn’t take any of them. A part of me hoped that meant he would be coming back, and we could have a conversation we’d both put off for far too long. But he didn’t come back.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I don’t even know where I stayed, it doesn’t really matter at this point.

**Jerome Hansen (manager, Star Hotel):**

Eliott Demaury? Oh yes, he was quite the frequent visitor back in the day, before he was famous even. The staff nowadays doesn’t know how big of a deal that was, and it’s moments like that I hate these new generations. I blame it on iPhones. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

The depression hit out of nowhere, and I think I’d had depressive spells here and there all throughout growing up, but this was different. Again, I didn’t know what to call it, because anything that wasn’t picture perfect wasn’t to be tolerated in my family, and how I was feeling was most definitely not picture perfect, but I knew that it was… different. Different than what I considered normal, at least.

That’s when I ended up at the Star, you know the old hotel that used to be right by the best bars in the city? Actually, it might still be there. I’m not sure, I haven’t been there since the eighties. Regardless, I ended up there, and I booked a room, and I didn’t get out of bed for about five days.

**Clara Patrick:**

I was staying at the Star at the same time Eliott was, yeah. I’d come back in town for a few shows, that was my first world tour, and I saw Eliott in the hallway. I asked him if he wanted to fuck, for old time’s sake, and he snapped at me. _So_ harsh. Whatever drugs he was on, I did not want to be anywhere near them. I liked my highs to be fun, light, not whatever the fuck he had going on.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

He called me. I’m not even sure he meant to, but it was that call that connected us forever, I think. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I didn’t know what to do, why I was feeling that way, and Idriss was the only person I could think to call. I had no one else, and I didn’t even think that I had him at the time. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

When I got to the Star I could tell he hadn’t showered or moved in days. Despite being in bed the whole time, he had bags so dark under his eyes I thought they were bruises, and he looked like he’d been crying.

I felt like shit, because I felt responsible, but I had to tell myself that whatever he was going through at the moment was more important than my self pitying regretful bullshit. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

He didn’t ask questions, he didn’t belittle me, he just made me feel safe, like maybe I did have a place in the world. It meant everything to me. 

I moved back in with him the next day, and that was when he became my best friend in the entire world. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

We moved into a new place, one that was more accommodating for the two of us. It wasn’t much, but it was ours, the two of us. It felt like the right step, and pushed us to behave more like brothers and less like parent and child. Trusting Eliott to handle his own shit has always been a struggle of mine, but I really tried, because I knew that he needed that from me. 

He stayed clean for a while too, or clean enough, I guess. He still smoked cigarettes even though he knew I hated the smell, but at least he wasn’t doing the hard stuff, the stuff I thought at the time had led to him breaking. I’d picked up the pieces well enough one time, but I didn’t know if I’d be able to do it again. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Not doing drugs was easier than I’d expected it to be. I didn’t yearn for any of it, didn’t feel lost now that I wasn’t doing the things I’d done for three or so years. It felt kind of nice, actually, to take a break from it all. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t so hard, because I thought of it as a ‘break’.

I’m not trying to belittle any of these experiences either, I know that it isn’t as easy for some people as it was for me, and I know that I really did have a problem. Easy is the wrong word, I think, because it _wasn’t_ easy, but it was at the same time. 

I apologize if you were expecting something more articulate, you have to remember that the extent of my education was eighth grade homeschooling. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I think that was around the time he started dating Camille. She was nice enough at first, but I always thought she was a bit full of herself. Rightfully so, I guess, she was pretty famous. 

**Camille Pierrot (singer):**

He had a bit of a thing for singers, didn’t he? All the people he fucked before he was properly famous were singers, I think. At least, the ones I know about. Funny isn’t it, how I was the one with the big name when we started dating, and now I’m giving interviews about being his girlfriend when he was eighteen to twenty years old. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

She reminded me of home. At least, the parts of home that I liked. She was French, but grew up splitting her time between France and America. 

**Camille Pierrot:**

I just thought he was hot, mostly. I didn’t care that he was French. Spotted him at one of my concerts, actually, he just happened to be right there in the front, so lost in my music I’m not even sure he noticed I was eyeing him the whole night until I got one of my people to invite him backstage.

If you don’t know him personally, when I tell you that Eliott Demaury was the most timid little thing I’d ever seen, you’d say I’m a dirty liar. But it’s true. He was so shy coming backstage to meet me, looked like he thought he was going to be scolded or something.

_(Camille laughs)_

Just one of the things that made me fall for him more and more with each passing second, I guess.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Camille was _Camille_ , and I was just me. Of course I thought I was in trouble, there was no reason for someone like her to talk to someone like me otherwise. Or so I’d thought.

**Camille Pierrot:**

I asked him if he was a musician and he just laughed and responded, “Maybe in another life. I don’t have what it takes, I’m afraid.” 

To this day I’m not sure if he was just being humble or if he was just that oblivious.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wasn’t anything at that point in my life, of course I wasn’t a musician.

**Camille Pierrot:**

I made it obvious very quickly that I asked him backstage for a reason, and fuck—

_(Camille laughs)_

I’m sorry, it’s just that he looked at me like the world had turned upside down, and it was simultaneously the funniest and most endearing thing I’d ever seen. It had been a long time since I’d met a man whose first instinct wasn’t to try to get into my pants.

**Eliott Demaury:**

She was only, what, three years older than me, but she looked like she’d lived a million lives in the time I’d barely lived part of one. I was so intimidated by her.

Idriss did not like her one bit.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I was just worried she’d pull him back into all the things he’d been doing before and send him back to rock bottom. For better or for worse, he was practically my brother now, and I didn’t want to lose him again. 

**Camille Pierrot:**

I never understood what Idriss’ deal was. He wasn’t even that well known himself at the time, so I don’t know why he thought he had some sort of authority over me and Eliott. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I think she was mostly mad because I wasn’t begging her to suck my dick.

**Camille Pierrot:**

And I get that he’s muslim, or whatever, but muslims can still look at girls without being grossed out, right? He looked at me like he wanted to vomit, which was, frankly, offensive.

I even tried to set him up with some of my friends, because I thought maybe he was jealous, but he never went for it. His loss, I guess. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I don’t care how pretty you are if your personality is shit.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I didn’t care that she was a little full of herself, I guess I thought she deserved to be, being as talented as she was.

I thought it was funny that she was always trying to set Idriss up with people, because I knew there was no way in hell he’d ever date someone associated with her. 

**Camille Pierrot:**

For the most part I was able to ignore Idriss and just focus on Eliott and I, though, and what we had was really nice. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

We were surprisingly compatible. She was just as romantic as I was, but more reluctant to show it. I don’t really think many people in her life took her seriously, but I never considered not doing so.

She toured a lot, so we didn’t spend much time together, actually, but the time we spent together was quite nice. I’d take her to all the hidden places I would find around the city, little pockets of treasure in a world full of commotion.

**Camille Pierrot:**

He had a way of making you feel like you were the only two people in the world.

**Eliott Demaury:**

She taught me what love was, I think. I’d always known, I guess, but the love I learned from my family was nothing like the love I learned from Camille. It was raw, and it was real, and it made me feel less alone.

**Camille Pierrot:**

He was very lonely. Whenever we spent time together after being parted it was like we were both breathing fresh air for the first time again. It was kind of cute, actually, the way he would light up every single time I walked into a room, even if it was just from the bathroom to the bedroom.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I had Idriss, but that was it. I loved Idriss, obviously, but I wasn’t _in_ love with Idriss, and I loved being in love. It’s one of my favorite feelings in the world. Our visits were rare enough that I didn’t care if we spent half the time fighting, I was just happy to see her. 

We didn’t fight that much, honestly, probably because she knew that I’d do anything for her. 

**Camille Pierrot:**

I think I could have asked him for the moon and he would have just lassoed it down from the sky right then and there. 

_(Camille sighs)_

I don’t think I’ve been loved like that since then, if I’m being honest.

**Eliott Demaury:**

She had a break after one of her tours and I think I practically lived with her during that time. Idriss was annoyed, but I wasn’t doing anything stupid, so he laid off scolding me. If I had a nickel for all the shit I’ve put him through as my best friend… let’s just say it’s a miracle that we’re still best friends to this day.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I’m still waiting for my best friend compensation check of roughly ten billion dollars.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Camille’s place was, to put it gently, a bit more extravagant than Idriss and I’s place.

**Camille Pierrot:**

Idriss and Eliott lived in a shithole, and I don’t mind saying so. I’m not sure why they did, both of them had money.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I loved spending time at her place, I felt like I was in an old Hollywood film. She barely even seemed to notice the decadence, which reminded me in some ways of my parents. I think that was the first time that I ever had a sense that maybe she wasn’t the one for me. But ignored it, because she loved me, and that’s all I’d ever wanted.

I mean, I’d had money my whole life, but I didn’t totally understand my privilege at that point, so when she treated everything like no big deal, I did too. It infuriated Idriss to no end, and I didn’t get it at the time, because he was doing pretty well for himself at that point too, getting bigger roles in bigger movies. 

But he worked his ass off for his success, and I was just born into mine. It wasn’t fair, and it took me a long time to see that. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

We lived in a shitty place because I was saving up money to buy my parents a house. It had been my goal since I’d started acting, and I was getting really close. The little apartment my sister and I grew up in was home, but I wanted to give back to them for all they’d done for me my whole life. I know they weren’t happy when I decided to be an actor instead of continuing school, but I hoped I’d be successful enough to show them that I made the right choice, and that I was grateful they’d allowed me to take such a risk.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Idriss was away a lot for acting too, so staying with Camille was my only option if I wanted to escape the loneliness. It didn’t always help, but it did more often than not, and that was fine with me. 

**Camille Pierrot:**

I’m sure Eliott can attest to the fact that I’m a bit of a workaholic. I’d just gotten done with the tour and I was already filled to the brim with ideas for my next album, I could hardly sit still. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Camille spent most days lounging by the pool, watching me swim. I liked swimming a lot, maybe it’s because I’m a water sign. Everyone would wait on her hand and foot, and she’d just sit there looking pretty for hours on end. 

It didn’t bother me, we always talked a lot on those days, or we’d discuss whatever book she was reading on her lounge chair. 

**Camille Pierrot:**

Eliott was my muse, at least for _Amour_. That album went platinum, my first to do so. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

She started writing songs a little bit into the time she was home, but she was so frustrated all the time and I hated to see her that way.

She said it was writer’s block, so I didn’t think it could hurt to help her out a little bit. I’d never tried songwriting before, but I rationalized that it really couldn’t be much different than writing a poem or a story, things I’d done as a way to ease my mind and my loneliness in the past.

Once I started, I couldn’t stop. 

It was like the words and melodies had been plucked from my waiting brain, like they’d been there all along. I felt like I had purpose for the first time in a very long time, and I loved it. 

**Camille Pierrot:**

All he had to do was sit there, and the words just came so easily to me! I hope he still thinks of me every time he hears those songs. But don’t tell my husband.

_(Camille laughs)_

Any of them… 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Every time I hear one of the songs from _Amour_ , I think of her. Because I wrote that whole album. All those love songs were about her. She knew it, of course, she wasn’t that delusional. I wonder if she ever thought it was weird that she was singing to herself, night after night, on her _Amour_ tour.

I wonder if she’s ever told anyone else that I wrote that album. 

**Camille Pierrot:**

I like to think that maybe my songwriting inspired Eliott, because we all know what he grew to be in the years following, so if I played a part in that I’m glad.

**Eliott Demaury:**

That’s when our “honeymoon phase”, if you want to call it that, ended. I didn’t take off my rose colored glasses so much as have them ripped off, and I didn’t much like the side of Camille I was seeing. 

While I was writing for her, I was fine with it, because I assumed I’d get credit, and maybe I’d travel with her for the next tour, but I was there the day her manager came over to talk about her new album, sitting in the next room over. I’m sure she thought I couldn’t hear them talking, but those large, empty halls echoed like a church.

She sang him one of the songs, which everyone now knows as “Pure”, or the song that won her a Grammy for song of the year. I was ecstatic when her manager loved it, but then she told him that she wrote it, inspiration coming to her in her dreams. 

I called the song “Pure” because that was what her name meant. Camille. It means “pure” or “perfect”, but I didn’t want to title a song “perfect”. That was the first song I wrote for her actually, because I was young and stupid and in love and I thought she _was_ perfect. I don’t know, even knowing what I do now about who she is and the lengths she’ll go to for her own self image, I don’t regret writing it. 

It is kind of funny that her most popular song to this day is a song named after her about her, though, and everyone thinks it’s about me. 

**Camille Pierrot:**

Yeah, Eliott came up with a lot of the song titles, that was always my weak point. He seemed so eager to help, I had to give in. 

_(Camille laughs)_

We worked through them together, of course, but sometimes he just had a way with words. Though I suppose we all know that well enough by now, don’t we?

**Eliott Demaury:**

Anyway, she told him the song was hers, and then she told me later that her manager had liked it, but thought it needed a little tweaking, which she told me she would have to do on her own. I accepted her explanation even though I didn’t believe it. 

The recorded version of the song sounds exactly how I wrote it, exactly how I imagined it in my head, so, you know. Whatever, I’m over it now, I really am.

_(Eliott laughs)_

I swear! I know it doesn’t sound like it, but I assure you, Camille Pierrot’s career is the least of my worries.

If anything, writing for Camille showed me that I had worth beyond a name or a face. Sure, it wasn’t recognized by anyone but her when we were alone, but it meant something to me, that I could actually be good at something, have a future. 

I decided that I wanted to be a songwriter, even though I had no idea how I would do that if no one knew I wrote the songs on _Amour_. Well, Idriss knew, and he nearly confronted Camille over it, but I stopped him because I loved her and I didn’t want her to think I was shit talking her to my roommate-slash-best friend. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I don’t like Camille Pierrot.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I played Idriss a couple of the songs I wrote her, just to test them out, and I could tell he liked them, even though he was mad Camille wasn’t giving me credit.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

They were fucking incredible. Obviously. Until that point, I had no idea Eliott could even write, or sing. I told him that he should be the one recording those songs, and he looked at me like it was the most outlandish thing he’d ever heard.

I swear, I love him, but he’s such a dumbass sometimes. Imagine sounding like Eliott Demaury and not knowing it for twenty years?

Fucking dumbass.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I’d never fancied myself a songwriter before then, and I’d never fancied myself a singer _at all_ , but Idriss had a way of worming his way into my head, planting ideas I’d never considered. I thought it was probably mostly his way of keeping me clean, he assumed that if I had a lot of hobbies I wouldn’t have time for that shit, and honestly it worked pretty well.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Encouraging him wasn’t my way of keeping him clean, but if it worked out like that, I’ll pat myself on the back for it and pretend that it was. I just encouraged him because he had serious talent that was going to waste on that girlfriend of his. I thought everyone deserved a chance to find their thing, but I didn’t know if Eliott would ever let himself find his without a little push.

For an idealistic, determined, ‘self assured’ person, he never seemed very sure of himself. He was so good at pretending to be perfect that sometimes I forgot that he wasn’t, you know? One smile could wipe away my memories of holding him while he cried in a hotel room that he’d spent way too much money on without realizing it. 

So, yeah, I told him that he should try his hand at singing, go to an open mic or two, maybe ask his precious Camille for advice on getting into the industry. I didn’t see any harm in it. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Once Idriss put the idea in my head, it was all I could think about. I would lay in bed next to Camille daydreaming about going on tour together, both our names written so high in the stars no one would ever forget them. I daydreamed about singing the songs that I’d written for her _with_ her, and her telling the crowds that it had been me all along. They were stupid daydreams, but that didn’t stop me from dreaming them. 

I was too scared to go to an open mic, especially because I didn’t know what I’d sing. I couldn’t very well sing one of Camille’s songs, and I’d never written anything for myself before. Crowds were never a thing that bothered me, but that was when I had nothing to prove, when just being Eliott Demaury was enough. I didn’t think I could handle failing, and at the time I was probably right for thinking that. 

So, I took Idriss’ second bit of advice, even though I suspect it was sarcastic. 

The first time I brought it up was in the hazy early morning light, both of us lost in her ridiculously high thread count sheets. I asked if I could sing one of the songs to her, and she just laughed at me like I was joking. 

“You don’t sing, Eliott,” she said to me, and that was that. I didn’t tell her that, actually, I thought maybe I wanted to sing. 

The next time I broached the subject was after one of her recording sessions. I asked if I could go with her next time, just to see how they ran those things, how the studios worked. She looked at me like I’d grown three heads, like I was stupid for suggesting it. 

I became less subtle after that, I would regularly talk about possibly going to open mics, or writing songs for myself in my free time, but I don’t think she thought I was serious. I think she just assumed I was doing it all for her, to relate to her or something. She made a comment once about me not having to worry about her leaving me behind, which wasn’t actually a concern of mine at all.

_(Eliott laughs)_

I kind of started to understand why Idriss wasn’t her biggest fan.

Then I decided, fuck it, if she wasn’t hearing me, I had to say something she couldn’t ignore because it was convenient. So, I asked if I could talk to her manager about getting started in the business, and she took me seriously.

**Camille Pierrot:**

I thought he had been using me that whole time as a stepping stone to fame. I was understandably distraught, though I know now that was silly of me to think so.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I couldn’t believe it. She yelled these wild accusations at me about how I never really loved her and just wanted her connections all along, and I felt my heart break for the first time. It wasn’t so much the things she said, but that she thought that I would ever do that to anyone, much less her.

I loved her, I loved her so much.

**Camille Pierrot:**

I was used to boys not loving me the way they promised they did, and I took that out on him. I regret it now of course, and I can’t help but wonder if things might have ended up differently if I hadn’t let my insecurities get the better of me.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I apologized to her, but she never apologized to me. I’m not sure if she even realizes how hurt I was, but I suppose it doesn’t much matter anymore. Ancient history, as they say.

**Camille Pierrot:**

I broke up with him. I told him to leave and that I never wanted to see him again.

**Eliott Demaury:**

She broke up with me. I don’t think I said a single word, not even in defense of myself. I did want to be a singer, I did want to write music, but I left, letting her believe that everything she said was true.

Thank god Idriss was home when I came back, a sobbing mess. If he hadn’t been there, I can almost guarantee I would have booked it to the nearest bar. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Eliott was so torn up about his break up with Camille, and I was livid with her. How dare she say those things about my best friend when she was the one planning to coast off his handiwork for the next however many years?

I was supposed to work with her on a movie years down the line, and I highly doubt she even remembered who I was, but I refused to work with her. By then, my name meant more than hers, and I never saw her again. 

Was that kind of a shitty thing for me to do? Yes. 

Do I regret it? No. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

After Camille, I started to give myself more credit, allowing myself to indulge in some of my daydreams. 

I kind of liked who I was becoming, and I hoped the world would too. 

Above all— the fame, the money, whatever else— I truly loved it, and I wanted people to see that. I’ve always been a romantic, and that was when I decided to turn my romance into art for other people to feel and experience hopefully in the same ways I had.

Eliott Demaury was going to be a name that every household across America and beyond knew, and I was going to make sure of it. People deserved to know what love felt like.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Eliott was a different person again after he broke up with Camille. I was wary at first, but it seemed like it would be a good thing. He was more motivated than ever, and it felt like he was alive in a way that was all his own. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Even though I knew that I was the one who wrote all those love songs, and that they were all about Camille, not me, I realized something else. I knew that everyone all over the world would hear those songs and think I was the person they were about and I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to be the person love songs were written about, I wanted to be the one writing them. But I was also scared of having my heart broken again, so I made a promise. 

I promised myself that I would never fall in love again, at least not that hard, because if I had music, that was all I ever needed. I thought I had enough experience to make something really beautiful without ever being hurt again.

I made good on that promise for a very long time, but come on. Everyone except me knew that it would never last forever, that I’d likely fall in love with everyone and everything I came into contact with despite my best efforts. 

_(Eliott smiles)_

I’m glad it didn’t last forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next week- Track 2: Lallemissy - Spring 1973 to Summer 1980
> 
> find me on tumblr: @kieunora
> 
> stay safe and stay strong ❤️ love to all


	2. Track 2: Lallemissy - Spring 1973 to Summer 1980

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for the love on the last chapter, it means a lot!
> 
> hope you continue to enjoy <3
> 
> tw for this chapter: suicide mention, substance abuse, mentions of undiagnosed mental health issues
> 
> now, get ready to meet lucas and the gang

**Sarah Bui (documentarian,** **_The Music that Defined a Generation_ ** **):**

Before there were the world tours and platinum songs, or even Seven Minutes in Heaven itself, there was just Lucas Lallemant and his half sister Manon Demissy in the middle of Minnesota.

It’s hard to say which of them had more of an influence on music, pop culture, and life itself during their time in the spotlight, but it  _ is _ safe to say that the world would be a much less vibrant and expressive place without them. 

It’s almost unimaginable to think that, had some circumstances in their lives not occured, the two might never have even met one another and become the sibling power duo that took the eighties by storm. 

Lallemant’s father was absent from his life from an early age, something he explored a bit in his music, and what impact it had on him growing up. Similarly, Demissy’s mother died in a tragic accident when she was five years old, showing her how harsh the world could be from a very young age.

At the age of ten, Demissy and Lallemant met for the first time, on the eve of their parent’s nuptials, and thus their story of becoming two of the biggest names in music history began. 

**Lucas Lallemant (lead singer, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

Growing up in the middle of America wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Well, it was, sometimes, but that was just because I was a lonely kid. My mother kept me company the best she could, but sometimes she couldn’t, and I felt this overwhelming sense that this was what my life would be like forever.

But then she married Richard. I didn’t even know that she was dating someone until she told me she was getting married, and I didn’t know about Manon until the day before the wedding. I was livid. Not that my mother had found love, I knew she deserved as much, but that now I’d have to share her with some  _ girl _ .

_ (Lucas laughs) _

I don’t think I made the best first impression on Manon.

**Manon Demissy (lead guitarist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

Oh my god, I nearly made my dad call off the wedding. There was no way in hell I was going to be stuck with Lucas forever. Luckily, I’m not as dramatic as Lu, so I didn’t do that, but I was very very tempted. 

Mix two lonely ten year olds who have been the center of their parents worlds most of their life and tell them that now they have to share that attention? Yeah, right.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was my mom’s “man of honor” at the wedding, and I still regret how I behaved to this day. Sure, I was ten, but my mom was happy for the first time in as long as I could remember, and I shouldn’t have been so stubborn. At least Manon was a bit stubborn too.

**Manon Demissy:**

We both got a serious talking to after the wedding, once our families had moved into a new place together. Getting along was the only option they gave us, but Lucas and I were still very reluctant to give that a go.

I decided to be less openly hostile, and he decided to ignore all of us, and that was what we settled into for quite a while. I thought maybe I’d overreacted, I’d never even really had friends my age before, so I didn’t know how to act now that I was living with someone my age. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was mad that we had to move for the Demissys. I loved where we lived, it wasn’t much, but it was everything to me, and now some new guy comes in and we have to flip our entire lives upside down? 

I don’t think I spoke to Richard, my mother, or Manon for at least a month. To her credit, Manon tried, but I wasn’t willing to listen yet. 

I felt more alone than ever before, I cried myself to sleep nearly every night, but I pretended I was fine. I pretended that the reason I wasn’t speaking was because they weren’t worth talking to, when secretly I feared it was because if I let them in, they would leave just like my dad. 

_ (Lucas laughs) _

I didn’t come to that conclusion back then, obviously. No, that one took years of therapy.

**Manon Demissy:**

Even back then I could see how sad Lucas was. It made me like him, slowly but surely, even if he wouldn’t talk to me, because I was sad too. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Everything changed again the day I found Manon playing the guitar in her room. We were both eleven at the time, nearing our parents one year wedding anniversary, and I wasn’t stupid, I could tell that my refusal to accept Richard and Manon as part of our family was weighing on my mom.

She had some undiagnosed mental health issues, my dad just called her crazy, and when I was young I didn’t know what to make of it, but I knew the signs when it would get bad. I could tell it was starting to get bad again, and that it was my fault. 

So, I decided I’d try, at least with Manon.

**Manon Demissy:**

My dad had started teaching me to play the guitar when my mom died. I’d been begging him to practically since I could talk, but he was a busy man, never really had much time for me. I spent nearly all my time with my mom before she died, not that I remember it now, I was too young. 

When she died, my dad had no choice but to be my dad, we were all each other had left. He’d always loved music, because my mom loved music, so he decided to give in to my constant requests. 

I’ve done a lot of things that I’ve loved in my life, but playing the guitar has always been my favorite thing in the world, it feels like home and reminds me of the good and the bad times in my life. Sure, I’d prefer the good without the bad, but the bad was what made me into who I became, so I like to remember it all, except for some things that are still a little too painful.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I had no idea Manon played the guitar until then, mostly because I still knew next to nothing about her, hadn’t cared to learn anything thus far; when I heard her play I  _ wanted _ to know her, because I got the sense that she was like me. 

I’d played the piano from a young age, my mom had taught me probably because it was the only way to get me to sit still for more than ten minutes when I was little, but it was so ingrained into who I was that even now, it feels like a second language. 

The piano was my only escape, my only way to process and express what I was feeling, and when I heard Manon playing guitar that day, I could tell the guitar did the same for her. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I always got so lost in my own world when I was playing that I didn’t notice Lucas was there watching me for nearly an hour. When I did, instead of pretending not to have been watching, he came into the room with me and asked what song I’d been playing.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It was “House of the Rising Sun”. To this day, I can’t hear that song without smiling and thinking of that day, the day Lucas and Manon became LucasandManon. 

**Manon Demissy:**

We were inseparable after that, and our parents were thrilled. Little did they know once we started taking each other’s sides, it would be a whole lot harder for them to exert any form of control over the two of us.

_ (Manon laughs) _

We were such little heathens, I swear. I don’t know how Celine and my dad put up with us. They had no idea the beast they’d unleashed by indulging our friendship with one another.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

We told everyone we were the Lallemissy twins, because we couldn’t be actual twins if we had two different last names, so we just combined them. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Once I had Lucas, I didn’t need anyone else. I’d always been very good at being alone, and so was Lucas, so we were alone together.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Flash forward a few years to 1976. God, I miss the seventies, things were a whole lot simpler back then. Well, some things were. Anyway, Manon and I were fourteen, and we were still each other’s only friends, but we were totally fine with that.

We were going to high school though, a real high school, we’d gone to a private catholic grade school on my mother’s request the other years we’d been together, so we knew it was going to be different. Our class at St. Andrew’s had eighteen kids total, ten boys, eight girls. 

Public high school was not like that. 

**Manon Demissy:**

All of a sudden we were in a class of over four hundred students, eighteen hundred in the whole school, and we only had each other. It was terrifying at first, for me at least. I’d always been a shy kid, keeping to myself unless absolutely necessary. Lucas wasn’t like that.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

In my mind I only had Manon, would only ever have Manon, so I didn’t care about what anyone else might think of me. I talked back to people that deserved it, got under people’s skin, disregarded most consequences because I knew my mom wasn’t in the right state of mind to care and Richard didn’t have the authority to discipline me. 

Maybe people thought I was confident, but I was anything but. I just didn’t care. 

**Manon Demissy:**

He’ll deny it to this day, but everyone loved him. Even the people he was a dick to. He’s always had this charisma that makes it impossible for anyone to hate him, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s quite attractive.

I think people were so intrigued by him that they wanted to get to know who Lucas Lallemant  _ really _ was, under it all. Joke was on them, I’m not sure  _ he _ even knew who he was at the time.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It freaked me out when people wanted to be my friend.  _ I _ didn’t even want to be my friend. I thought the jokes and teasing and recklessness would turn people away, not bring them closer. 

Then came Yann Cazas.

_ (Lucas laughs)  _

That fucker.

**Yann Cazas (bassist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I had absolutely no patience for the “enigma” that was Lucas Lallemant. I thought he was annoying, and he wasted time in class that I could have spent learning shit I was actually interested in. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Truth to be told, I might never have known who Yann was if he hadn’t called me out one day in class, during our sophomore year. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I honestly don’t even remember what I said, but I know it was pretty mean. I was just sick of everyone fawning over him like some god when I knew deep down he was probably everything but.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I suddenly wanted to know Yann Cazas more than I’d ever wanted to know anyone.

**Yann Cazas:**

He—

_ (Yann laughs) _

He invited me to hang out with him that same day. I said no, because I thought he was just being typical Lucas Lallemant, but when I saw how defeated he looked after I said no, I began to reconsider. The next time he asked, I said yes. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Thank fucking god he said yes.

**Yann Cazas:**

I knew Manon, a little bit. I knew they were “twins”, at least that was what they told everyone, but I didn’t know her well, so seeing how she and Lucas acted around one another for the first time was very jarring for me. 

I didn’t know Lucas could be so soft and sweet, and I didn’t know Manon had that much of a personality. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I was mad at Lucas for trying to befriend Yann. I didn’t know why I wasn’t enough for him, why he wanted more. I shut him out for a while, and then I was hurt because he didn’t even notice. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

When I started becoming friends with Yann, Manon started acting super weird. I’m still not sure why, at the time I thought maybe she had a crush on him or something, but she never told me what was up. In any case, I was glad to have Yann, because I was worried I didn’t have Manon anymore. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Lucas always complained to me about how weird Manon was acting, but I probably wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t brought it up. I know they’re not actually twins, but their twin shit was too much for me sometimes, don’t know how I managed with just the two of them for a while.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Yann became one of the most important people in my life, and he still is. I’m not sure what I would have done without him through everything, he kept me grounded most of all, which wasn’t always an easy task, not when you have thousands of people yelling your name like you’re someone worth listening to.

**Yann Cazas:**

I’d like to state for the record that Lucas Lallemant’s hair is the reason he’s considered a rock god.

Seriously, have you seen it? I would always tease him about going bald, but it never happened. Lucky bastard. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

He gave me shit when I deserved it, but always rooted for me even when I couldn’t or didn’t want to root for myself. We were thick as thieves, and my relationship with Manon suffered a bit because of it. 

Manon and I were still close as ever, for the most part, but at school I didn’t hang out with her as much, and I pretty much only talked about Yann or things I’d done with Yann when we were together.

**Manon Demissy:**

God, the early stages of Yann and Lucas’ friendship were annoying.

I don’t blame him for forgetting that I didn’t have any other friends, but I do sort of blame him for not making an effort to include me, even a little bit. Teenage me harbored that animosity towards Yann for a long time, which he didn’t deserve, but I couldn’t be mad at Lucas because I was afraid he’d stop being my “twin”. Stupid, I know, but we can’t always help they ways our brains work. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I always asked Lucas if Manon wanted to hang out with us, because whenever Lucas was with me she was alone, but he basically refused to let it happen. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I liked Manon better than me, so I assumed the same would happen with Yann. And then I’d be alone.

We all kind of existed like that throughout sophomore and junior year. Yann and I talked to a few other people sometimes, but I don’t even remember their names. I always skipped parties to stay with my mom or Manon, and things seemed like they’d maybe be ok.

**Manon Demissy:**

Lucas’ mom wasn’t doing well during our high school years. I think she had some mental health issues, but nothing was ever diagnosed. It made things difficult sometimes, and I know Lucas thought so too, but he loved her more than anyone in the world. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Richard didn’t give a shit, just like my dad, about her mental health struggles. I didn’t really know what it was, I assumed everyone was like she was. Richard would call her crazy when she got in one of her moods, or had moments where I’m not sure if it was even her at all. Manon never saw those moments, but I did. I should have interfered, or stood up for her, but I was too scared. 

I never did well with male authority figures, but we don’t have time to unpack all of that.

For the most part, I just made myself scarce around the house. That was another reason I was with Yann so much. His family life was perfect and I envied it. I love my mother dearly, but back then sometimes I would wish for a family more like his. It was shitty of me, I know it was. And I know I’m a bad son, believe me.

That’s mainly why I never really had Yann over at our place. I didn’t want him to know that maybe the way I was compensated for the fact that as ok as I thought my life was, my ok was most other people’s terrible. 

I did invite him over one day, though, our senior year, I don’t even remember why, I think I must have had a new magazine I wanted to show him or something, and that was when everything changed, once again. 

**Manon Demissy:**

One day after school during our senior year Yann came over but Lucas wasn’t home yet. He had detention but didn’t tell Yann, so it was just the two of us. It was so fucking awkward.

**Yann Cazas:**

I had no idea what to say to her, I thought she hated me.

**Manon Demissy:**

I hated him, for no good reason other than the fact that Lucas wasn’t alone anymore and I still was.

**Yann Cazas:**

She left me alone after a little bit, probably because neither of us had said a word and things were getting very tense. I didn’t know what to do in their house on my own, so I wandered. They had a pretty small basement, but it was filled with instruments. I guess Manon’s dad played a lot of them or something, but I didn’t know at the time. I didn’t know if Lucas or Manon played any of them at the time either.

In retrospect, I probably should have asked before going to town on one of Manon’s dad’s basses, but I wanted to see if I still remembered what I was doing, I hadn’t played in quite a while. 

I got lost in my own little world, and I didn’t notice that Manon had wandered down there and was listening at some point in my jam session. When I did notice her, I freaked because I thought she was going to bitch me out, but instead she told me to keep playing and left, coming back in a few minutes with a guitar of her own. 

We sounded damn good together, even back then. 

**Manon Demissy:**

What Yann had was magic, and even if I didn’t like him, I couldn’t deny it.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I thought I’d stepped into a parallel universe when I came home and found Yann and Manon playing together in the basement. 

The thing was, they were good, they were so  _ fucking _ good. 

I mean, you all know this by now, but back then? I was shook.

_ (Lucas pauses) _

I’m being told not to say ‘shook’ because it sounds weird when I say it, like ‘I’m trying to be hip’, but I’m ‘so not hip’. Apologies.

**Yann Cazas:**

I will not forget the look on Lucas’ face as long as I live. Priceless. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I started to understand why Lucas liked Yann so much. Didn’t mean I had to like him quite yet, but I understood. He had the same feeling about music that we did, he felt it in the depths of his soul.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Now, I was jealous, obviously, because they’d only played together once and they sounded like  _ that _ , so I wanted to one up them. I couldn’t do it on my own, but Manon knew my plan the minute we caught each other’s eyes. We’d been practicing the song together for a while, and secretly I’d hoped we’d perform it for Yann and blow his mind, so there was no time like the present.

**Yann Cazas:**

Lucas sat at the piano with purpose. I didn’t even know he played piano. Neither one of them talked to one another, Lucas just told me to listen, and they started to play. 

The song they played was “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, and dare I say they did it better than the Beatles?

_ (Yann laughs) _

Ok, maybe not, but at the height of our careers, if they’d have played that song? Better than the Beatles by a landslide. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Lucas sang, because I was afraid to mostly. I don’t have a bad voice, people have heard me sing live a lot over the years, once I got more comfortable with performing, but I’m nothing like Lucas. He was blessed with the voice of an angel, which is ironic considering the fact that he’s such a little devil. I wasn’t sure why he was trying so hard to impress Yann, but Yann was impressed indeed. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I was already blown away when he started playing piano, but when he started singing I realized that whatever I thought I knew about Lucas Lallemant was only barely scratching the surface of who he was.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

What can I say, I’ve always been full of surprises.

**Manon Demissy:**

Yann asked if he could play with us sometime. I didn’t want him to, but I did. I’d felt the energy in the room when we played, and knew it would only be better with Lucas, I wasn’t stupid, but playing music had never really been a ‘thing’ for us up until that point. It was a hobby, an escape, not something to pursue.

But once Yann suggested it, I couldn’t get the idea out of my mind.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I wanted to play with Yann and Manon more than anything, I wanted to turn this into something, and I thought maybe the three of us could. But I wanted my safe space, and I was scared of opening it up. I also didn’t want Yann to get further into the belly of the beast, see what I was constantly running from and why I was running. 

**Yann Cazas:**

They left me hanging for a good week or so, I assumed it was Lucas convincing Manon to give it a shot, because I still think she didn’t like me at that point.

**Manon Demissy:**

In the end it was me who convinced Lucas to give it a go. We didn’t say we were starting a band, not in so many words, but that’s what it was. Lallemissy, we called it at the time, because that’s what we’d always been called.

**Yann Cazas:**

I didn’t care that they called it Lallemissy, I was just happy to be there at all. 

**Manon Demissy:**

It became clear pretty quickly that Lucas couldn’t sing, play piano, and play drums all by himself, but I only knew guitar, Yann only knew bass, and Yann couldn’t really carry a tune for shit, so we figured we’d have to expand to at least one more person if we wanted a real shot at making good music. 

**Arthur Broussard (drummer, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

Everyone knew Lucas, and, by extension, Manon and Yann, but I didn’t  _ know _ them. Apparently they knew me, somehow.

**Yann Cazas:**

We didn’t know Arthur, we just stalked the school band practices to find someone who could fill our needs. We weren’t even sure what type of musician we were looking for at first, but then there was Arthur.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

He was massively talented, we could tell right away. He always stayed after practice to play on his own, and that’s when we started to think maybe Arthur was the right guy to join Lallemissy.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I wish I could say I wasn’t a little enamoured when Lucas came to talk to me for the first time. I wish I could say I wasn’t a little enamoured by him for a very long time.

**Manon Demissy:**

I liked Arthur right away, and I was secretly hoping that he could be my new friend, to balance out Yann and Lucas. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I don’t  _ think _ Manon was into me, but she always seemed to think we were better friends than we were, at least at first. We did get really close, but not close like I got with Yann and Lucas. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Oh how young and foolish I was, thinking anything would come in the way of Yann, Lucas, and Arthur teaming up to be the biggest idiots I’d ever met.

Men, I swear to god.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Secretly I was a bit sad that Arthur was a drummer, because I loved playing the drums and the piano so much, but it was obviously for the best. I was probably better at piano anyway.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I think Lucas played every instrument known to man. When I went to his and Manon’s place for the first time so they could see how I fit in with their group, he was already in the basement with a guitar strung over his shoulder, one hand on the piano keys, and one hand holding a drumstick. He could have been a one man show, he really could have. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Yeah, I taught Lucas guitar over the years, yeah, he was probably better than me, no, I’m not still bitter about it. 

_ (Manon laughs) _

Ok, maybe a little bit. I was still the lead guitarist, though, that’s all that mattered to me.

**Yann Cazas:**

I taught Lucas to play the bass, and he tried to teach me how to play the piano. One of us got really good. I bet you can guess which one that was.

He was probably a prodigy, those kids you read about in the news nowadays playing the hardest piano pieces ever composed when they’re like, four? Yeah, that was definitely Lucas.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Practice made perfect, of course, but I always felt I understood music better than anything else. I would never be as good at guitar or bass as Manon and Yann, but the fun for me was in trying it all and seeing what stuck.

I probably looked like a lunatic when Arthur came over that first day, but thankfully he didn’t mention it. It was literally our second conversation ever, but I liked him right away. He still seemed a little uncertain as to why he was there, so I told him we were starting a band, and we needed a drummer.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I was more excited than I wanted to say or show. I love music, always have, and I tried  _ really, really _ hard to improve every day with my skills, especially on the drums. It was harder for me, sometimes, after my freshman year of high school, because of my partial deafness, but it only made me want it all more, to prove that I could do it. The idea of being in a band was like a dream come true to me. 

That being said, I can honestly say I never thought we’d make it. We probably owe most of that to Lucas’ inherent star power, or whatever, but yeah. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I had no idea Arthur was deaf in his left ear until we were well into our careers. I felt like an idiot for not knowing, but it’s not visible, and he never said anything, so I’m not sure how I would have known. I’m pretty sure his parents didn’t even know at that point.

**Manon Demissy:**

Arthur told me he was partially deaf after that first day at our place, probably because he knew that if he asked me to keep it a secret I would. I tried to accommodate sometimes without being overbearing, but I’m not sure it was helpful.

**Yann Cazas:**

Arthur looked so fucking nervous that day he came over to Manon and Lu’s place, it still makes me laugh to this day. As if he had anything to be nervous about with the three of us.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I felt like Yann would be the easiest to win over, so I kind of clung onto him like a lifeline that first day. Little did I know that I didn’t have to win them over, I guess they liked me already.

**Manon Demissy:**

I’m so glad Arthur didn’t turn out to be a dick. So, so glad. We could have had it so much worse.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

We played more Beatles songs, because they’re pretty universally known, and Arthur fit right in. He got mad when I called him Ringo, though.

_ (Lucas laughs) _

I get it, he was better than Ringo.

**Manon Demissy:**

After that day, well, it looked like we had ourselves a band. A real one. I was so excited. Plus, it gave Lucas and Yann an excuse to include me when they were hanging out, and teenage me liked that more than anything.

The only problem was that we didn’t exactly know what having a band entailed. None of us had ever written music before, and there were only a handful of songs we all knew to play. 

We got good at those handful of songs, though. Really good.

Sometimes my dad would come downstairs and listen to us, sometimes Lucas’ mom would. Lucas was  _ always _ incredible, but when either one of them was there, he was truly magical. 

When it was his mom, he was softer, more intentional in the way he sang and played, like he was trying to impress her but not be over the top about it. When it was my dad, he was harsher, more direct, like he had something to prove. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I still don’t understand the Lallemant-Demissy family dynamic. It’s been how many years? Thirty, almost forty? Still don’t get it.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I hated when Richard watched us play. I could tell that he thought we weren’t that good, even though we were, that he assumed we’d never get anywhere. I think he was just jealous that we had the kind of talent he didn’t. He had all these instruments, all these records, but he never did anything with any of them, aside from teaching Manon to play guitar when she was little. 

**Manon Demissy:**

My dad stopped playing and making his own music when my mom died. He loved Celine, he really did, but I think my mom was his soulmate. If I hadn’t pestered him to teach me guitar, I think he might have just locked away all his instruments and records and never looked back. I’m glad he didn’t, because otherwise I’m not sure what I would have become. A lesser version of myself, I think. I found my confidence, found out who I was because of our music. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Lucas convinced the principal to let us play at our senior prom. None of us would have had dates or anything anyway, but Lucas and Arthur probably could have if they’d wanted to. I just figured I’d take Manon because she was actually my friend at that point and her and Lucas going together would have been weird.

We never got around to that, though, because all of a sudden we had to put on a show. I was skeptical, I’ve always been a skeptical sort of person, so Lucas had to convince me the most, but I gave in because everyone gave in to Lucas eventually. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I think Lucas had the hardest time convincing me to play at prom. I hadn’t even wanted to go. Aside from him, Arthur, and Yann, I wasn’t friends with anyone at our school, and I didn’t care about dressing up to stand by myself in the corner of the school gym. 

On top of that, I was terrified. We’d never performed for anyone before, why the hell should we perform for the entire senior class? This was something I asked him about a million and a half times, but he blew me off every time I tried to talk about it. When he had his mind set on something, there was no changing it.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I was super excited to play at prom. I was in the school band too, and they never let me play the drums, even though that was what I loved, so it was kind of a  _ fuck you _ . I think it was a little bit of a  _ fuck you _ for Lucas too, though I’m not sure who it was aimed at. I could be wrong, he could have just genuinely been excited to play at prom, but anyone who knows Lucas at all would probably laugh if you suggested that.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I had no ulterior motives in performing at prom. Really.

_ (Lucas laughs) _

I can tell you don’t think I’m being serious, but I am. I wanted our band to perform for more people than my family, and this was the only way I could think of to do so. I definitely wasn’t trying to prove that I was more than whatever facade I put on to make people love me at school. Well, love is a bit strong. I didn’t care if they loved or hated me, as long as they were talking about me. 

Does that make me a bad person?

Still, I wanted to curate what they were talking about. ‘That asshole Lucas Lallemant’ was fine, ‘class clown Lucas Lallemant’ was whatever, but ‘should totally be a rockstar Lucas Lallemant’? I liked that the best. 

I’ve measured success in various, mostly meaningless ways all my life, but I wanted to know if I was kidding myself, or if there was actually something there. I know other people’s opinions aren’t supposed to mean more to you than your own, but my own opinion wasn’t going to get me a record deal, especially if I was wrong about us.

**Yann Cazas:**

When prom night came around, all of a sudden Lucas was the nervous one. It might have been funny if it wasn’t so disconcerting. In the three years I’d known him, I’d never once seen him like this.

**Manon Demissy:**

On prom night, Lucas reminded me of how he was when we were kids. Nervous, self conscious, without that well crafted mask he wore so well.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It was real, all of a sudden. We weren’t kids practicing in a basement. Sure, prom was no Madison Square Garden, but tell that to seventeen year old Lucas.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Manon and Yann were coddling him, but I just told him to snap the fuck out of it. It was his idea to perform in the first place, and we were going to do just that— with or without him. 

His eyes looked like they cleared and his face got all determined. I don’t think Lucas ever thought he was more talented than any of us, but I do think that he thought he was the ‘face’ of the band, so to speak. There was no Lallemissy without him, in his mind, and it may have been true, but I don’t think you could say the same for me, Manon, or Yann.

After that, we went on stage, launched into one of our many Beatles songs, and hoped for the best. 

**Manon Demissy:**

It hadn’t even been a full year, but hearing us play “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” then compared to back when it was just Lucas and I… I don’t know, I thought it was special. I still do. 

I don’t think many people were paying us much attention, but they were dancing, so that was all I could hope for. 

Being on stage felt better than I’d thought it would too. I found myself enjoying it, nerves leaving me completely. It was fun to pretend, in our little Minnesotan town, that I was a rockstar. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

After Arthur knocked some sense into me, everything was easy. It was more natural than anything I’d ever done, being up there. 

**Yann Cazas:**

No one ever saw me. Except Lucas. Then, everyone saw me. 

I’ll admit, it was a bit strange, a bit disconcerting. But I didn’t mind if they saw me, under that context.

Prom as a concept kind of blows, if I’m being honest, but I had a lot of fun performing at that one. I was wearing the only suit I owned, and it probably looked like it was the only one I owned, but at least my suit looked better than Lucas’. 

_ (Yann laughs) _

I think it must have been his stepdad's suit or something, because it was massive on him. I mean, Lucas has always been rather small, somewhere around 5’6”, I think, and I think he was probably done growing by that point, and Richard was about six feet tall, so you do the math. 

Arthur looked like he’d stepped out of a fashion magazine. I knew before then that his parents had money, but I never really considered Arthur to be rich until that night. I noticed things more and more throughout our time together after then, the way he was more flagrant with money than the rest of us. He didn’t mean to do it, or mean anything by it, but it was still there. We all had our moments, so I never called him out on it, but I wonder if he ever noticed that he was the richest of us by far. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Celine let me borrow one of her dresses for prom, and I was a little uncomfortable doing so at first because I didn’t want Lucas to think it was weird that I was wearing his mom’s clothes, but then I decided I didn’t care. He was wearing one of my dad’s suits, and that wasn’t weird, so why should it have been weird for me to do basically the same thing?

She had some really beautiful gowns, and I wondered why. She and my dad never did anything that required formal attire, and her ex husband had been long gone by the time we’d come around. I never asked, actually. Maybe they just made her feel beautiful, I know that’s what they did for me. 

I did feel kind of weird wearing a long formal gown to play music at prom with my band, so I wore this sleek, silky red dress, cut off the bottom, layered it with another one of my dad’s suit jackets and put on some chunky boots. With Celine’s permission, of course.

I’ve tried a lot of looks throughout my career, but that’s one I’ll always remember.

**Yann Cazas:**

At one point the principal came and demanded we play a ballad or something, because people wanted to slow dance. I think he was more concerned that our songs were getting people a little  _ too _ rowdy. Oh, to be young.

**Arthur Broussard:**

The issue was, we hadn’t practiced any slow songs. And we’d never written our own songs at all, so… you can see how that might have been a problem.

Of course, it wasn’t a problem for Lucas.

**Manon Demissy:**

Lucas barely skipped a beat when the principal came and told us to play a ballad for couples to slow dance to. Just nodded and agreed while the rest of us exchanged glances that said,  _ shit _ . 

He looked at me and told me to tell the other two to hold off on playing after this song, that he could handle it on his own.

The three of us were confused enough that we let him. I honestly just assumed he was going to play one of the old piano pieces his mother had taught him over the years. He still kept up with the more classical stuff, even as we descended further into rock and roll territory. 

But then he didn’t play one of those songs, he didn’t play anything any of us knew. It was a piano ballad, and it almost sounded like something any other prom would play for their slow dance, but it was unique, and I had the impression that we were the first people hearing this particular song.

**Yann Cazas:**

Shithead had to one up us by writing a beautiful piano ballad without our knowledge and being ready to perform it solo in front of our entire class. None of us knew Lucas wrote music, none of us knew he wanted to write music. All the discussions we’d had about where to take our band once we’d exhausted covers, and never once did he say, “Hey, I could try writing some music.” 

The song was beautiful. No other word for it. Of course, you all know this by now, but I bet you didn’t know that Lucas debuted “Mon Cœur” at our senior prom. 

Everyone thought it was a love song, but it wasn’t. I may not have understood the Lallemant-Demissy family dynamic at all, but I knew that Lucas loved his mom more than anyone in the world. 

It didn’t hurt that I’d heard her call him ‘mon cœur’ a few times. I think she was French, or something. She and Lucas would speak French to one another sometimes during practice or around the house and the rest of us would be sitting there like idiots while we waited for them to say something we understood. 

Not that knowing more than one language is a special talent, per se, but Lucas Lallemant has always been one talented motherfucker, that’s for damn sure. 

**Manon Demissy:**

_ (Manon sings) _

_ ‘Even when your head hangs low, I will always be your hand to hold / the world is scary, but you’re my home / my one, my heart, mon cœur.’ _

God, fuck. It’s been a long time since I thought about that song. Still as beautiful as ever, still entirely misunderstood by nearly everyone who heard it.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Whoever Lucas was singing that song about, damn. He really loved them. He refused to tell us who it was about, but Manon and Yann always acted like they knew. It was so annoying.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Yeah. It was about my mom. 

_ (Lucas pauses) _

Can we talk about something else?

**Yann Cazas:**

Our prom show was a hit. 

I’d like to say it was because of the majority of our other great covers, but it was probably because of Lucas’ song. We, as a collective, had many realizations after that show. 

First, we should write some original music, because if Lucas could just whip that out of nowhere there had to be more where it came from. Second, Lallemissy could actually be something, if we wanted it to be. It wasn’t just a basement project anymore, it was real. And, lastly, we needed more members if we wanted to do what we thought we could do. 

As amazing as Lucas was on keys, he was not the type of performer who could sit still an entire show. Even if we had a standing keyboard, or a synthesizer of some sort, he needed to rock the fuck out.

_ (Yann laughs) _

So, at the very least, we needed a replacement on keys, but we also toyed with the idea of a rhythm guitarist and background percussionist. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I wasn’t super excited to give up the keys, but I knew they were right. And it wasn’t like I wasn’t going to be the one writing the music, so I’d still have chances to play the piano during the creationary periods. Onstage I did prefer to be free in as many ways as possible.

I liked the idea of adding three more people, because I thought seven was a lucky number. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I didn’t care about the rest, I mostly cared about the rhythm guitarist. They had to be able to compliment me without taking over.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Four people, seven people, twenty people, I didn’t fucking care. I was finally doing something I loved.

**Manon Demissy:**

There was a performing arts high school in the city, so we posted a few flyers there, saying exactly what we were looking for. We put Lucas and I’s phone number on the posters, because we figured that was the best way to go about getting people to contact us.

First came Emma.

Thank the heavens for Emma Borgѐs.

**Emma Borgès (keyboardist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I hated that stupid performing arts school, because quite honestly I felt like it was taking me nowhere. I didn’t really have any big plans for the future, per se, but being some sort of concert pianist definitely was not the direction I wanted to go. Then I saw the Lallemissy poster, and they said they were looking for keys, and I decided, why the hell not?

**Arthur Broussard:**

Emma was chill, I think we all liked her immediately. I was surprised Lucas was on board right away, he was usually super particular, especially if this girl was going to be replacing him on keys, but they clicked, and suddenly four was five. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I finally found the best friend I’d been looking for all these years in Emma. She was weird, and chaotic, and kind, and way more talented than she ever gave herself credit for. 

**Emma Borgès:**

Manon was the coolest by a long shot, cool in one of those ‘doesn’t know she’s cool’ kind of ways. All I’m saying is, it’s no surprise she was the it girl of the eighties. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I decided to go in with low expectations, so I wouldn’t be disappointed if she wasn’t what we were looking for, and she blew those low expectations out of the water. She was amazing. I could tell she was classically trained, but she had a great ear for all the small intricacies that make piano one of the key elements of music making.

I didn’t put on a show for her, because I didn’t put on a show for anyone in the basement, and to my surprise she liked me regardless. I liked her too. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Emma was cool. Pretty, too. Not like how people like Manon and Lucas were pretty, in an in your face kind of way. In an understated way, like she knew she was pretty but either didn’t want to or didn’t care to flaunt it. 

She was also nearly as good on the keys as Lucas was. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Next came Baz, the wildest, sweetest motherfucker I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. 

**Basile Savary (rhythm guitarist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I knew Emma a bit from some of our classes and she was telling me about this band she joined and I was super jealous. She told me they were looking for a rhythm guitarist, and I near shit my pants, I begged her to let me audition.

**Emma Borgès:**

I think I laughed in Baz’s face, which I feel bad about now, because I realize how it looked, but in truth I was laughing at the fact that he thought he’d have to audition in the first place. 

These folks operated out of a basement and hung up a poster in a school they didn’t even go to to try to get people in their band, they clearly weren’t very sophisticated. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Basile was… interesting. I wasn’t sure if I liked him or not for a little while. There were instances where he could be really sweet, but then in the next breath he’d make a total horndog comment and I’d just roll my eyes and wish I was alone with Emma. 

He was a great guitarist, though, exactly what we needed, so he stayed. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Basile Savary gave me a run for my money when it came to the amount of chaos one body could contain. He came on strong at times, and I don’t think Manon liked him much to begin with, but he grew on all of us.

I think he was Arthur’s Yann, just like Manon was Emma’s me. I hoped that whoever our seventh member was wouldn’t feel left out.

**Daphné Lecomte (background vocalist and percussionist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I saw one of the Lallemissy posters at school, and I figured why not. It had been one of my new year's resolutions to try new things, and being in a band was definitely new. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I didn’t know Daphné, but she was focused in different areas of music than I was, so I guess that made sense. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I thought we’d pretty much covered it all, in terms of personalities, by the time Baz joined the band, but then Daphné came along. She always kind of put me on edge, not going to lie, not sure why though. 

She seemed like one of those people whose pleasantness was fake, and was actually a pretty shitty person deep down, but I never saw the shitty side if she had it. I don’t know. Her vibe was just really weird to me.

**Manon Demissy:**

My first thought was that Daphné looked like every girl I hated at our high school, and then I felt bad for thinking it because I knew it wasn’t her fault she was pretty and blonde and bubbly and whatever.

In any case, I was determined to make an effort, because how could I call myself a feminist if I wasn’t willing to try to get to know her without judging her?

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I was just trying to impress everyone, and I think I came on a little strong.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I think she played more instruments than Lucas did, actually, which made her the perfect background artist. 

She hated being called that, but none of us knew a better name. She mainly did backing vocals and percussion, but if we wanted some orchestral strings in a song, there was Daphné with her violin, or if we wanted some brass, there was Daphné with her trumpet, or if we wanted something subtle, there was Daphné with a triangle. 

You get the point. 

She did a lot in the band, more than me at times, but background artist was still the best title we could come up with.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Background artist wasn’t the title I would have chosen for myself, but I’d expected them to turn me away, so I was willing to take what I could get. I really liked them all and wanted to get to know them better.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

We had a band. A full, real band. 

There were a lot of kinks to work out, considering we had three new members that hadn’t been practicing with us for almost a year, but we worked through them much more quickly than I would have expected. It felt like fate, that things worked so well with the seven of us.

Yann was consistent as ever, Manon was really coming into her own, Arthur continued to surprise with the depth of his talent, Emma took over where I couldn’t with ease, Basile provided a nice added layer to our sound, and Daphné’s voice complimented mine really nicely, her other musical skills coming in handy whenever we got stuck.

Graduation was looming for all of us, and I knew that Manon was planning on going to school, Arthur and Yann were probably going to do the same, and even though I wasn’t sure about where our newbies were headed, the thought of either waiting four years to continue what was already so great or not do it at all was terrifying to me. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Lucas talked to me first about the future. I’d been under the impression he wanted to go to college like me, but that obviously wasn’t the case. He wanted to move to LA and try to get a record deal for the band. 

I loved the band, and I really could see a future with it, but I was scared of that risk. It sounded crazy back then, to give up education for a pipe dream that might not pan out.

I told him I’d think about it, and that satisfied him for a little while.

**Yann Cazas:**

My parents wanted me to be happy, and if this band was what made me happy, they were cautiously supportive of me moving out to LA with Lucas and the crew.

**Arthur Broussard:**

My mom saw how much I loved the band, but my dad wanted me to go to school to be a doctor. I had a hard time saying no to him, so I agreed to go to college like he wanted. In LA. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I’d been looking for a plan, and Lucas gave me one, so I was sold. My mom didn’t care, she thought it was good for me to have some ambition, so she supported me moving away, even if I wasn’t going to college. 

**Basile Savary:**

It seemed like everyone else was going, so of course I was going to. My parents did want me to go to college, but I reasoned that they shouldn’t have sent me to a performing arts school if they didn’t want me to try to have a career in the performing arts. 

I won that argument.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

My mother didn’t even know I was gone. I feel bad for the way I left, the guilt still eats at me sometimes, but my mom had a lot of issues with substance abuse, and I couldn’t be around that anymore. When Lucas told me what he wanted to do and asked if I’d come with, I didn’t hesitate. I had to get out of there. 

I haven’t spoken to or heard from my mom since. She’s probably dead now. That should make me sad, I know it should, but really I stopped having parents when my dad left when I was twelve, and my mom turned to self medicating. I raised myself from there, so I figured she didn’t have any say in what I got to do with my life.

**Manon Demissy:**

Everyone else was going. Arthur said he was going to college in LA, but we all knew that was a ruse to appease his dad. At that point Arthur had told me about what caused his partial deafness, so I didn’t blame him for trying to appease but still getting the hell out of there. 

I’m very practical at heart, which is why this decision was so hard for me, because nothing about moving to LA and trying to make it as a band was practical. And yet, still, the longing was there. I wished I could just jump into things headfirst like Lucas without thinking about all the potential disasters that would await us.

In the end I said, fuck it, there’s no Lallemissy with out -missy, so I took a leap of faith. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Thank fuck Manon agreed to make a potentially stupid decision. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without her. 

Richard and my mom argued a lot about whether we should be allowed to go. My mom argued for us, Richard against. The one thing that was holding me back was my mom, because I knew that when I was gone I wouldn’t be able to protect her from people like Richard who didn’t see that she was suffering on the inside.

I suggested they come with, but Richard had a job in Minnesota, and he didn’t want to give it up. 

I suggested just my mom come with and Richard laughed in my face. 

In the end it was just us stupid kids, and the housing market wasn’t shit yet, so we rented two apartments, side by side, in the heart of Los Angeles. Still, LA was more expensive than Minnesota, especially when we were the ones paying for it. One for the guys, one for the girls. Arthur’s tuition money was used to pay it until we could make money of our own, because his parents were rich and he had no intention of keeping his promise to attend university.

Moving everything out there sucked, mostly because of all the instruments, and with that came the dawning realization that without the basement we didn’t have anywhere to practice.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I couldn’t afford more than the two apartments without asking for more money, which my mom wouldn’t have questioned, but my dad would have, so I couldn’t help out with that. Lucas said he was going to get a job to be able to afford somewhere we could rent and play, because if we couldn’t play there was no point in being there, and the rest of us just agreed.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I got a job at this bar called Under the Sun, which everyone just called the Sun, because apparently one extra word was too much work or something. I decided to work there because it seemed easy enough and they had a little stage for open mics and performances. I figured I could work out a way to let us practice there during the day before the bar opened. Also, free booze. I never got up to many shenanigans in high school, but Yann and I had been known to steal Richard’s alcohol from time to time. We’re only human. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

We had a problem, and Lucas somehow solved it in less than a week. It was infuriating in a way that couldn’t be infuriating because it was actually pretty awesome. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I was worried about living with Emma and Daphné at first, because I’d only ever been with Lucas, but the idea of sharing a small space with Lucas, Yann, Arthur, and Basile was enough to make me decide to make it work. 

At that point I was pretty close with Emma, but Daphné was a bit harder to get close to. She’d tell you everything about everyone but herself. I didn’t know a real thing about Daphné for a really long time.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

It was hard for me to all of a sudden have Manon and Emma around all the time. I was so used to it being just me… I liked it, don’t get me wrong, but it was weird. Emma acted like it was the most natural thing in the world, us three living together, and that helped. Manon always seemed wary around me, though, and I didn’t know if that meant she thought there was something wrong with me or something wrong with her. 

I never talked about it with her, because I didn’t talk about real things with people, ever, so I didn’t know where to start. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I loved the Sun. Wonder if it’s still open. Some great times were had there.

_ (Yann laughs) _

Some were not so great, too, but such was being eighteen in LA with nothing to do but make music during the day and drink at night because I knew the bartender.

**Emma Borgès:**

Lucas was a fucking terrible bartender, oh my god. 

**Basile Savary:**

Lucas was such a great bartender, it was kind of annoying how good he was at everything. 

**Emma Borgès:**

He barely paid attention to the people  _ at _ the bar, choosing to listen to the music instead, but that was to be expected if you knew anything about Lucas Lallemant at all. He was also kind of rude to all the customers, including, you know, his bandmates. 

Everyone ate that shit up, though. They thought him being an asshole was him being sarcastic and cynical or whatever, and he raked in tips like no one’s business. 

**Basile Savary:**

So many girls wanted him, for real. They’d ditch their dates for the night to stand up near the bar and try to get Lucas to notice them. He never did, but he was a great wingman. In all honesty, I kind of had a thing for Daphné at the time, but she didn’t give me the time of day, so I could take a hint.

**Yann Cazas:**

Lucas’ job had its perks for all of us, I think. Beyond the practice space, if you catch my drift. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I didn’t belong in that scene. We went to the Sun nearly every night, because Lucas was always there and with Lucas came free drinks and girls and boys sent our way, and I started thinking that if this was what LA was, I’d made the wrong choice. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Manon cornered me in the back room one night, while I was getting more alcohol for behind the bar, and she told me she wanted to go home. I freaked out, I knew I couldn’t do this without her, and I asked if there was anything I could do to make her stay.

She said to write a song worth staying for, and I agreed. 

I’d been so busy with work and trying to get all seven of us on the same page that I’d neglected the fact I was supposed to be writing music for us to play, and with that realization came a bit of guilt. Everyone had given up a lot to be there with me, and I wasn’t coming through like I’d promised. 

We were probably three months into our new lives, and we had nothing to show for it other than a couple of covers of songs made famous by other people. 

I felt like a failure, a disappointment, even though I knew that the only one disappointed in me was me. Usually, when I felt like that, I turned to my mom, but she was nearly two thousand miles away and I didn’t want to call and burden her with my issues when I knew she probably had enough of her own. 

I wanted us to be on that stage I watched every night, on even bigger stages. I didn’t want us to waste what might have been the best years of our lives behind a bar or in front of it, I wanted us to be remembered. I wanted to be remembered. 

And, I had inspiration for the first time since we’d moved out to LA.

**Arthur Broussard:**

If he wasn’t working at the bar, he was locked in his room writing. No one was allowed to interrupt his process, a lesson Basile learned the hard way, and no one was allowed to ask any questions.

**Emma Borgès:**

I’m not sure why he all of a sudden got into this writing frenzy, it wasn’t like we were in any rush, but he seemed so determined that we all just let him do his thing.

**Manon Demissy:**

I hadn’t seen Lucas like this in a long time, so hyper focused. I felt kind of bad, because I’d sort of given him an ultimatum, but he refused to speak to anyone until he was done, so I couldn’t rescind what I’d said or tell him that he didn’t have to work quite so hard. 

As much as I didn’t feel at home in LA, I didn’t want Lucas to lose his mind trying to change that. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I could have written songs too, but I was the newest addition to the band, so I didn’t think it was my place to do so.

**Mika Dolleron (owner, Under the Sun):**

Lucas was a handful, but he was worth it. He spent so much time dazed out during his shifts that I threatened to fire him many, many times, but we both knew I’d never go through with it.

More customers came to the bar when he was there, and as many pretty girls there were, there were a lot of pretty boys as well. I owe a lot of my best hook ups to Lucas Lallemant, I guess. That’s not weird to say at all.

I’m not just here now to be one of the people who used to know Lucas Lallemant, by the way. My husband Camille and I had him over for dinner yesterday, so I’d say we’re fairly close. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I owe Mika Dolleron a lot. Like, more than a lot. More than he probably even knows. Maybe someday I’ll pay him back for it all.

Don’t tell him I said that, though, I don’t want it going to his head. 

**Mika Dolleron:**

I don’t remember when it was, exactly, sometime late ‘79, Lucas was even more in his head than usual. He told me he was trying to write a song, and I figured, how hard could that be?

He told me it wasn’t hard, it was that he had too many ideas and his mind wouldn’t quiet down enough for him to sort through them. I told him a bar probably wasn’t the best place to try to find a quiet mind. He laughed at me, and he sort of looked like normal Lucas again, and he asked if he could run ideas by me, said he figured I heard enough music night after night to know the good stuff from the bad stuff. 

He was right, I’ve heard some of the best music had to offer. I’ve heard things so great I was sure nothing could ever top them. Then Lucas took me to the back and sang through a couple verses he was working on, and my jaw dropped all the way to the floor, and I decided that  _ this _ was the best music had to offer. 

I still stand by that.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I named the song “Under the Sun” because of Mika’s help. He’d probably insist he didn’t help all that much, but an outside perspective was really all I needed. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Lucas had this way of writing love songs that weren’t actually love songs. At first glance, “Under the Sun” was about wanting someone to love you forever, about needing that person in your life, but after I read it and heard it a couple times, it was obvious. It was about fame, and wanting the world to remember you.  _ Under the sun _ .

It was brilliant.

It didn’t hurt that the bassline was sick as hell, and I knew he’d written it that way just for me.

**Manon Demissy:**

Yeah, it was fucking brilliant. So, I stayed in LA, and everything started looking up for us. 

**Basile Savary:**

Lucas had us practicing like crazy, man. Anytime he wasn’t working, we were at the bar anyway. Using the stage and getting better at what we did. I really liked “Under the Sun”. It was rock and roll in the best way possible. Kind of understated, but that was how I liked it.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

To be honest, I still don’t know if we were a rock band or not. Some of our songs definitely hit all the criteria of good rock music, but a lot of it was more ‘alternative’ by contemporary standards. 

It was rock, but it was different, different in such a way that people always wanted more. By the end, I’m pretty sure we crossed over into every adjacent genre with our music, but we were still labelled a rock band. I suppose that’s better than nothing at all. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

After weeks of begging, Mika finally agreed to give me a Friday night off, and let Lallemissy perform at the bar. I knew that night in particular was going to be packed, which is why I begged so hard. 

**Mika Dolleron:**

We probably lost a lot of money at the bar that night without Lucas bartending, because everyone flocked to him like a moth to a flame, but our numbers were through the roof regardless. If I hadn’t given him that night off, I’m sure they still would have made it some way, somehow, but not in the way they did.

**Arthur Broussard:**

“Mon Cœur” and “Under the Sun” were our only perfected original songs at that point, so we filled the rest of the set with covers, switching up the styles enough that they’d sound like originals if you weren’t paying close enough attention.

**Imane Bakhellal (manager, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I was supposed to meet my idiot brother and his roommate at Under the Sun that night, but they bailed last minute for some reason and I didn’t know until I was already there. The joys of time before cell phones, right? 

I didn’t like going to bars then, I still don’t now, but I knew they could be good business opportunities. I wanted to be in the music business without making music myself, and bars were the best places to find undiscovered talent back then. No soundcloud links or youtube channels. 

Now, I was well aware that I was a bit out of my depth, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I may have been a young, black, muslim girl, but anyone who thought any of that mattered didn’t deserve to work with me anyway. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

We took the stage at just the right time. Everyone in the audience was tipsy, drunk, or on their way to being there, and they were ready to rock out with us. 

So, we gave them what they came for. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I’ve seen lots of audiences by now, but that one was special. It wasn’t very big, but they were so into what we were doing that it made us feel like we were famous. Guys and girls alike were yelling and cheering and begging for more. Mika was rolling his eyes at us from the bar, but he looked proud, and unbeknownst to us, Imane Bakhellal was in the audience, wheels turning in her head.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I knew the minute that they started playing that they were my ticket to success, and that I could be theirs.

**Manon Demissy:**

Imane approached me after the show, probably because she couldn’t find Lucas, and told me she wanted to manage our band. I was flabbergasted.

I didn’t really know any of the famous music managers, but I knew that she wasn’t one. First of all, she didn’t look much older than any of us, and second of all, I was positive if there was someone like Imane high up in the music industry, I’d know. But I didn’t care if she was high up in the music industry, I had the feeling that she was like us, underdogs with a lot of unshared talent. 

I told her I’d arrange a meeting with the rest of the band sometime soon, but she said she didn’t mind waiting until I could get everyone together backstage that night, so I started to round up everyone. Maybe there were more qualified people out there, but I had a gut feeling Imane was the best person we could have asked to walk into that bar that night.

I was right, wasn’t I?

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I went to the bar to thank Mika after the show. I also maybe wanted to revel in people telling me how great I was a little bit. In retrospect, I should have just stayed backstage with Manon, but I was always a sucker for the limelight. 

I met Chloé that night. Chloé Farge-Jeanson. You all know who Chloé is.

She was pretty, really pretty, and she was pretending not to be impressed by me, but she kept hanging around the bar while I talked to Mika. 

Let me just state really quickly that I’m great at flirting, always have been, but that’s because it was kind of a second nature or a mask for me to wear. When I flirted with people, I didn’t ever expect it to go anywhere because I didn’t really want it to. I just wanted them to love the idea of me. 

That night, though, I was riding the high of a successful show, and Chloé wasn’t deterred when I stopped giving her attention, and I thought that maybe I could try something with someone like her. Apparently she was famous in France as an actress, and she was in LA trying to break into American cinema. I didn’t know that, I didn’t watch French films. 

I did speak French, though, courtesy of my mom. Her parents were from France, had moved to the U.S. just before she was born, but she’d been raised on a combination of French and American culture, and she wanted to do the same for me. 

So, when she stuck around, I flirted with her in French, because I caught her accent, and she flirted back, and by the time Manon found me in the back room, tongue down her throat, we were minutes away from what probably would have been a very big mistake.

That was actually my first kiss. It’s not like I’d been saving it, I just hadn’t found anyone who piqued my interest. A small, romantic part of me was disappointed it happened in that context, not in the middle of the pouring rain after a love confession like a movie or something like that, but I’d never get it back, so I learned to live with it. 

I never expected to see her again, which was why I wasn’t worried about leaving her that night, but I should have known better by then. When it came to Chloé, I was always a goddamn idiot.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Lucas was the last to arrive, and he looked like he’d just had sex, and I started to doubt myself just a little bit. I really didn’t want to work with someone like that, who was just in it for the sex and drugs part of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

The minute he saw me, though, he became completely professional, looking horrified that he’d been the last person there. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Glad I did, as much of a pain in the ass as he was, he was worth the trouble. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Imane told us she wanted to manage us, and I think I was the only one skeptical about it. Like, I was pretty sure she was only a few years older than we were, and I’d never heard of her before, so I wasn’t sure if she was a super credible source to get into the industry.

**Yann Cazas:**

Our first real attempt at a show and we got a manager? It was fate, man. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Imane was so professional, businesslike. She intimidated me a lot, like she could make or break me if she wanted to. But everyone else was over the moon that she saw something in us, so I was too. 

**Basile Savary:**

I thought Imane was joking, but she wasn’t, so I figured why the hell not? Even if she wasn’t the best manager in the world, at least we’d have a manager!

**Emma Borgès:**

I could tell Imane knew exactly what she was doing. She reminded me of Lucas in that way. Neither one of them had any real experience, but you just knew that they were the best of the best. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

What other option did we have? I figured any manager was better than no manager. I could tell everyone was surprised I agreed so readily, but I think I knew even then that Imane and I were two sides of the same coin.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I was expecting a whole lot more pushback, but they trusted me immediately. I made sure I warned them from doing that in the future, but I was glad they did it with me. We set up a meeting for later in the week to discuss where we’d go from where they were now, and then I left, completely forgetting my brother and his friend had ditched me. Turned out the night wasn’t a total bust after all.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

The first thing that Imane told us when we met with her after that night was that we needed a new name. She said Lallemissy made no sense and it didn’t encompass what we were doing with our music. I knew she was right, but I’ve always been stubborn. Lallemissy had been our thing, me and Manon’s, since we were kids. I didn’t want to give it up.

**Manon Demissy:**

I knew there would be no going back if we changed the name, and that scared me. It was different when it was Lallemissy, there was less at stake. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Manon and Lucas were acting like it was the end of the world but the rest of us thought it was about time we changed the name. I mean, it was just a stupid name, they could still be the fucking ‘Lallemissy’ twins everywhere else in the world if they wanted.

**Emma Borgès:**

There were some really terrible suggestions, mostly from Daphné. Love her, but I’m very glad we took her name ideas with a grain of salt. 

**Basile Savary:**

There were seven of us in the band, so I suggested Seven Minutes in Heaven. I thought it was kind of funny, like a reference to the game as well.

**Yann Cazas:**

The ironic thing about it was that none of us had probably ever played the game. We weren’t cool in high school, we didn’t hang out with people and go to parties and play games where you ended up locked in a closet with someone for seven minutes. 

Still, I kind of liked it.

**Arthur Broussard:**

It was kind of the perfect name. Rock music was all about sex, and that’s what such a name implied without being overly direct about it. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I don’t think any of us thought of the sexual connotations of the name while we discussed it, it was more of a tongue in cheek sort of thing. A reference to a loss of innocence in a sense, but not in a sexual way. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I hated to admit it, but it was perfect. There were seven of us, it had a nostalgia factor, and there was a sexual intention behind it. That’s rock and roll, baby. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I had no idea what seven minutes in heaven was. I thought Basile had meant to say “Stairway to Heaven”, like the Led Zeppelin song, and mixed up the words. I didn’t know it was about sex until way later, though Manon always insisted it wasn’t.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

It maybe wasn’t my first choice, but Lucas and Manon both agreed to it, so I decided not to argue. I wasn’t entirely sure of their dynamic from the first time I met all of them, but it was clear after that day. 

Lucas was the de facto leader, a position he seemed to have given himself but no one wanted to argue with. He was a good leader, for the most part. I’m sure the rest of the band has a lot to say about it, but from my perspective, he was good at being somewhat in charge. Because, really,  _ I _ was in charge.

Manon was the mom of the group, the one who made sure they were all where they were supposed to be and that looked out for everyone when they got a little too crazy, which happened more often than not. I owe so much to Manon, I wouldn’t have been able to wrangle them all without her.

If Manon was the mom, Yann was the dad. He was more chill than Manon, but stepped up when he needed to. His expertise was usually used to keep Lucas in line, because he was the only one Lucas would listen to, and I thank Allah every day for that. 

I’m not sure what Arthur was, honestly. He was one of the original four members of the group, so he always felt integral in indescribable ways. But he was either all in or not at all. He kept a lot of secrets too, like he had a whole life none of us were a part of. But, for the most part, he was there when you needed him to be, and he went with the flow more than anything. Who Arthur is now is nothing like who he was when he was in the band.

Emma, Emma, Emma. I love Emma. I don’t think she ever caused any trouble that couldn’t be solved swiftly and she was damn good at what she did. All I had to do was make sure she showed up places on time. 

Basile… was full of contradictions. He was fine with being in the background, but sometimes he had a chip on his shoulder when Lucas would tell him to play a certain way or Manon wanted to change a melody that he’d worked on perfecting. Overall, he was a lot sweeter than people gave him credit for, a lot more talented than people gave him credit for, and a lot more annoying than people gave him credit for. 

Daphné was kind of like Basile in the way that she was full of contradictions. She was soft and sweet, but she was also fierce and ambitious. She knew her worth, but sometimes she let people walk all over her. I never knew what to expect with Daphné, and it took a long time for either one of us to trust the other fully, but I’m glad we got to that point. If I was going into battle, I’d take Daphné with me on the front lines. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Imane said we needed to record a demo, which meant that we needed somewhere to record and we also needed at least one more song. I was fine with putting “Mon Cœur” on the demo, but the others were unsure, because it was really just me and a piano, none of them had any part in it. 

In the end we tweaked the production a little bit to add some violin on behalf of Daphné and her endless musical abilities and I let Emma play the keys, even though I knew it best myself. It was supposed to be a ballad, not a rock song, and our final production reflected that. It was a risk, but I figured it was worth taking. I wanted to show the record labels that we weren’t like everyone else, that we had our own thing going for us, and that it was fucking awesome.

I wrote “Seven Minutes in Heaven” pretty quickly after the meeting with Imane, and we all worked together to fit the music to the lyrics. It wasn’t the Lucas Lallemant one man show anymore, but I kind of enjoyed seeing what we all came up with as a collaborative. It wasn’t as rock and roll as some of our others, like “Under the Sun”, it had more of an indie/alternative edge, but it was a great song. I never thought it was our very best, but it was the one that got us signed. 

**Yann Cazas:**

To this day “Seven Minutes in Heaven” is one of my favorite songs we ever recorded. It’s probably partially because of the fond memories I have of that time, all of us so excited that we might actually have a chance to turn this into a career, a living, that no one argued and everything flowed so seamlessly.

The ongoing melody in the song, Manon and I actually came up with that ourselves, with a little input from Baz. It was the first time Lucas didn’t do everything himself, but I think it paid off. I was surprised, actually, by how much I liked it, because it really wasn’t classic rock, but I think that’s what made it special. We were proving that rock didn’t have one sound.

That was a damn good song, I get chills thinking about it now.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I submitted their demo to practically every record label in LA. My brother knew Camille Pierrot, so I was hoping maybe he’d have a way to get us in with her label, but apparently they weren’t on good terms anymore or something, so there went that idea.

It felt like years later, but really it was only about a month, and I got a call from Charles Munier with Shame Records.

**Charles Munier (studio head, Shame Records):**

Seven Minutes in Heaven had some magic. I wasn’t the one who listened to their demo, that was one of our producers, but she wanted to work with them so badly that I figured, why the hell not. If they ended up not being worth it, it wouldn’t be that big of a loss to us, and if they were worth it, it would only put us on the map more.

They were a risk worth taking. 

**Emma Borgès:**

Somehow, seven teenagers from the midwest with a couple dreams and a little bit of talent had a record deal. Ok, maybe more than a little bit of talent. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I was in shock when Imane told us. I couldn’t believe that this was actually happening for us, that we were going to be signed for at least one album under Shame Records.

**Arthur Broussard:**

We had to celebrate, and where better to do that than the Sun? Besides, all of us were pretty close with Mika by then and had promised he’d be the first to know if we heard anything from any record labels. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I’ve been overwhelmingly drunk a fair few times in my life, such was the lifestyle of an eighties rockstar, but I think that night was the drunkest I’ve ever been. I don’t remember any of it, if I’m being honest, and thank god Manon took care of me, but it was probably worth it. We were going to be superstars. 

**Basile Savary:**

I hooked up with a really hot girl that night. I don’t remember her name, but she was really hot. Not that that matters, that sounds like I only noticed that she was hot— I promise, that’s not the case. I respect women a lot. More than men, even. I bet she was really smart as well as hot, I just didn’t know her well. I’m sure she’s very successful now and is living a great life. It’s what she deserves. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I went to the back room to call my mom and tell her the news. We’d kept up nice communication with one another in the time I’d been gone, and she was planning on visiting with Richard soon. Normally I wouldn’t have called that late, but I just had to share that the song I wrote for her was one of the reasons I now had a record deal. I was going to sing the song for her for the first time on the phone because she’d never heard it before. 

Richard picked up the phone instead of my mom, but I was happy enough that it didn’t annoy me. His voice sounded weird and distant, almost strained, especially when he realized he was talking to me. I couldn’t hear him very well over the loudness of the bar at first, but when he told me it’s like the world went silent. All I could hear was the ringing in my ears.

_ (Lucas pauses) _

My mom killed herself. He’d only just found her right before I called, coming home late from work. He was going to call Manon and I in the morning to explain, but I beat him to the punch. 

I can’t even remember the last conversation I had with her, I don’t know if I told her that I loved her or if I was just too absorbed in myself to notice anything else. Maybe she’d been doing bad this whole time and I’d been too blind to see it. 

Richard had to ask if I was still there multiple times because I didn’t know what to say. Finally, I just told him that I’d call back with Manon in the morning to arrange a flight home for a funeral, and he just agreed, letting me go. 

Before he hung up he told me it wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t even been thinking that it was my fault until then, but then it was all I could think about. My fault, my fault, my fault. I was never a good enough son to her, and I now never had the chance to make it up to her, to be the son she deserved. 

When I went back out into the bar, everyone was still celebrating, smiles wide as can be. I knew I wouldn’t be able to fake it, so I decided not to feel anything at all. 

I’m honestly not sure how I survived that night, given all the shit that was in my system by the end of it. The last thing I remember from that night is seeing Manon from across the room looking at me with concern, then touching my face and realizing I was crying. And also realizing I couldn’t really feel my limbs at all. 

After that, everything went black, and I started my slow descent into the belly of that darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not sure if the link will work or not, but if you want to listen to "seven minutes in heaven", you can do so on my tumblr!! i'll be posting lyrics/instrumentals to some of the songs there if you'd like to check them out or give them a listen!
> 
> tumblr: kieunora
> 
> next week- Track 3: Fifteen Minutes of Fame - Summer 1980 to Winter 1982
> 
> stay safe and stay healthy, sending all my love ❤️


	3. Track 3: Fifteen Minutes of Fame - Summer 1980 to Winter 1982

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so obviously u can see i've changed my update day but i'm going to try to have weekly sunday updates from here on out! time is a bit of an illusion these days anyway, but alas
> 
> also this chapter is 25k so uhhhh oops but i hope you like it
> 
> also also: other than the few songs i made up myself, the others are just songs that already exist that i like and thought fit the band's vibe, i'll probably be doing that for the other albums too, so just imagine this is a world where all of the songs are written and recorded by the characters, not whoever they actually are lol
> 
> i'll link the spotify playlist (minus original songs) in the end notes, and you can find all the original songs on my tumblr!
> 
> tw: mention of death of a parent, substance abuse, insomnia/anxiety

_ Armed with grief and a record deal, over the next year and a half, Seven Minutes in Heaven began their rise into the music scene and into our hearts. Their first album, Fifteen Minutes of Fame, met a level of success that was entirely unprecedented for a group so new to the business and so young. But before they could become one of the greatest bands music had ever known, Lucas Lallemant and Manon Demissy had a personal tragedy to attend to. _

**Yann Cazas (bassist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

Everything felt bittersweet once we all found out about Lucas’ mom. Manon was the one who told us, because she and Lucas all of a sudden were packed to go home for a little while and the rest of us thought we should have been getting started on our album.

She told us not to push it, not to talk to Lucas about it, so we didn’t, but I’m not so sure that was a good idea.

**Arthur Broussard (drummer, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I don’t think Lucas would have told any of us if Manon hadn’t been there too. I think he would have just left and let us deal with whatever that meant for the band. 

**Manon Demissy (lead guitarist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

Lucas didn’t talk to anyone when we went home. I felt like we were ten years old again, on separate sides of a battle neither of us really wanted to have to fight. I couldn’t tell if he thought it was my dad’s fault or his fault, and he wouldn’t listen to me when I tried to tell him that it was no one’s fault. 

Looking back on it, all three of us really should have been there for Celine in ways that we weren’t. No one talked about mental health back then, at least not where we were from, and I think that’s a big part of why Lucas got so involved in mental health organizations throughout our careers. He didn’t want anyone to suffer like his mom had, and if he couldn’t change the past he was going to make damn sure there was a bright future for those living with mental illness. 

As many conflicting things people have said about Lucas over the years, he really did lead with his heart more often than not. Yeah, he was ambitious, cocky, secretive, a bit of an asshole, and way too talented for his own good, but he was also the most loving, caring person I’ve ever met. 

My dad was torn up about losing Celine, so I tried to be there for him, but it was hard to try to manage both Lucas and him when they both grieved in such different ways. Neither of them seemed to realize that I was grieving too, that I might need someone to hold my hand and tell me that everything would be all right. 

The only time Lucas spoke while we were home was to sing a song at Celine’s funeral. I thought for a minute that he was going to sing “Mon Cœur,” but he sang “Amazing Grace” instead. He told me years later that it was the first song he remembered his mother singing to him when he was a kid. 

His version was so raw, but ethereal, like he was one of the angels in the church come to life. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the room when he was done. He only ever sang that song once again, which I’m sure we all remember. To this day he gets people begging him to record a studio version of the song, but he’s always refused. 

My dad didn’t want us to go back to LA, and I, surprisingly, was the one who argued with him. Lucas didn’t argue for or against me, but the fact that he didn’t argue at all told me that if I hadn’t spoken up he would have stayed, he would have left everything we’d worked for. I couldn’t let that happen, I couldn’t let him give up on himself. 

I know it’s not my job to make sure things work out the way they’re supposed to for my dumbass brother, but I did and continue to do it anyway. I can’t help it at this point, it’s second nature to me.

Lucas still hadn’t spoken a word since he heard the news about his mom, and that didn’t change when we got back to LA. All our friends were happy to have us back, but Lucas didn’t entertain their happiness for even a moment. I told everyone he was just tired, physically and mentally, and they accepted that, but I’m pretty sure they all expected him to be back to Lucas the next day. 

I think it goes without saying that he wasn’t.

**Yann Cazas:**

I was really worried about him. Manon told me that he wasn’t speaking, which wasn’t exactly the best thing for the lead singer of a band. She assured me he just needed time, but this seemed different. I can’t imagine what he was going through, but I was worried he wouldn’t come back from it. 

**Basile Savary (rhythm guitarist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I didn’t realize how big Lucas’ personality was until it was gone. Everything he was was just such a permanent fixture in our lives that everything felt off balance with him isolating himself. Manon couldn’t get through to him, Yann couldn’t get through to him, so I figured nothing I could do would be any help. He didn’t know me or like me as much as them.

**Daphné Lecomte (background vocalist and percussionist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I told everyone I could try writing some music while Lucas was feeling down, but they didn’t want to hear it. They wanted Lucas or nothing. I understood, but it still annoyed me at the time. I mean, sure it was Lucas’ band first, but there were seven of us. He couldn’t expect to continue to carry the brunt of the work, right?

**Emma Borgès (keyboardist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I tried to keep up with practicing, even though I didn’t have any new material. We all did. The first words Lucas spoke to anyone three months after his mom died were to me. I was practicing “Mon Cœur,” and I guess he’d been sitting in Manon’s room, and he came out and told me never to play that song again.

I told him that I would have to if it was going to be on our album, and he said that I should just forget that song ever existed. Then he went back into Manon’s room, and I didn’t tell anyone he’d spoken to me. Manon was out with Daphné, I’m not even sure why he was in her room.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I noticed that Lucas didn’t sleep in his room anymore. I didn’t know what he was avoiding there, still don’t. I tried to be there for him to the best of my ability, but I was never very good at that. And besides, if he wasn’t going to talk to Manon or Yann, there was no way he was going to talk to me. 

**Imane Bakhellal (manager, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I gave the band a few weeks after Manon and Lucas got back to reacclimate before jumping back into everything. I assumed they’d need some time to adjust, and if I could have given them more I would have. But this was also the first group I’d ever managed, and I didn’t want things to go to shit after one setback. Charles with Shame Records was less lenient than I was, but I kept him from becoming a problem while the group got back on their feet. 

No one told me that Lucas was refusing to speak to anyone, however. 

**Emma Borgès:**

When Imane came knocking I knew we were in deep shit. We had no new music, no plans, and no lead singer.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Maybe if they would have let me write some songs… But I guess we’ll never know now. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I intercepted Imane to try to fill her in on what was going down, but I could see how angry she was. To me, her anger seemed justified, though. I was angry too. Yes, a horrible thing had happened, but we were all still there, and if Lucas wasn’t even going to try to come out the other side, why was he even there?

It sounds harsh, I’m aware, and I know that it takes a long time to heal from these things. I was trying to heal too, but that’s the keyword here.  _ Trying _ . I was trying, he wasn’t.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Lucas was laying in Manon’s bed staring at the wall when I came in. He looked so lost that I almost lost my nerve, realizing just how bad this was. But I knew that this wouldn’t be the last time I’d have to do something uncomfortable for the greater good of the band, so I sucked it up, and tried to get through to him.

**Manon Demissy:**

I knew then that I never wanted to be on Imane’s bad side.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Basically, I just told him to wake the fuck up. I told him that I was sorry for his loss, and I knew that there was nothing that I could say to make it better, but this isn’t what his mom would have wanted. She believed in him enough to let him come to LA and pursue his dreams, and, based on what Manon had told me, she wouldn’t have been able to bear the thought of the world losing out on hearing what Lucas Lallemant had to say.

We all go through hard times, I told him, he wasn’t special. Grief wasn’t his own personal invention. Manon was grieving too, but what was she doing at that moment? Trying to get his ass out of bed. I asked him if he’d even considered how she was doing. She’d lost two mother figures in her life at that point, one more than he had, and she was still trying to live her life, bounce back from the grief wearing her down and make happy memories to replace the sad ones. 

I probably said it all a bit harsher than that, but I figured I’d try anything. The rest of them, I know they just wanted the best for him, but they were treating him like a child. He was technically an adult now, and he had responsibilities. The world wasn’t going to wait for him, and I didn’t want him to get so far behind he would never catch back up. Selfishly, I knew he could take us all to unimaginable heights, and I wasn’t going to risk that never happening. 

**Manon Demissy:**

He looked up at Imane, still laying in bed, then looked at me. Wordlessly, he got up and left the room, leaving Imane and I to exchange confused glances. 

The next morning, the boys woke up to the sound of Lucas banging on the drums. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

What can I say, I’m the Lallemant whisperer. 

**Lucas Lallemant (lead singer, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I don’t really want to talk about this. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I was about to go tell Arthur to shut up when I realized he wasn’t the one on the drums. I quickly hurried to go tell everyone what was going on, and to tell them to acting fucking normal about it. 

**Basile Savary:**

Thank god Lucas was back, I was beginning to worry we’d go all  _ Lord of the Flies _ soon. I didn’t think I’d fare well if that happened.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Everyone told me to go ask what he was working on, because he was on the drums and that was my forte. I really wasn’t in the mood to be yelled at or given the silent treatment, but I did as they asked.

To my surprise, he didn’t bite my head off or pretend I didn’t exist.

I asked him what he was doing, casually, if you will, and he said “making history.”

To think I’d almost forgotten how much of a cocky bastard he was. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was always thinking about music, even when I wasn’t thinking at all. I probably had three albums worth of ideas in my head, waiting to be acted upon, Imane just gave me the push I needed to act on them. That’s all I’m going to say about those weeks.

**Emma Borgès:**

It took a few more days for everything to go back to normal completely, but we were getting there. Lucas even made dinner for everyone one night, then took us all out to the Sun for drinks. 

**Manon Demissy:**

His mother didn’t have a huge inheritance, but she’d left us both some money. Lucas more than me, obviously, and Lucas seemed determined to blow it all as fast as possible. I cornered him that night at the Sun and told him that if he wasn’t more responsible with his money, I’d put Imane in charge of his finances. 

I’m not sure he was sober enough to listen to me, but he eased up on his spending for the night.

**Mika Dolleron (owner, Under the Sun):**

That was the first time I’d seen Lucas since he got signed. I assumed he’d quit, though he never actually told me one way or the other. He stopped showing up for shifts, though so I took that as an answer. No one told me his mom died, and I didn’t think anything of it when his friends came to the bar without him for a little while.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I was excited again, now that Lucas seemed to be back to normal. I could tell that the light in his eyes was a little dulled, but I figured that’d be fixed by the time we started recording in a real studio. The rest of us had taken a tour of the Shame Records studios while he and Manon were away, and they were legit.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Chloé was at the Sun that night. I’d nearly forgotten about her, but I guess she hadn’t forgotten about me. I felt weirdly intimidated by her presence, for some reason, and I thought that meant I was into her. 

She clearly did too, because she seemed more than willing to pick up from where we’d left off. 

I knew I wasn’t in the best place, and I was still messed up from my m— everything that had happened, so I got her to slow her roll, but I asked if she’d want to go on a date with me sometime, somewhere that wasn’t a bar I used to work at. She said yes, and I decided that I was happy about it. She gave me her number so I could make plans with her sometime we weren’t both drunk and I promised to call. 

Mostly, I decided that I had to start being happy about some things, that I was tired of feeling nothing all the time.

Imane met with me separately the day after, asking if I was up to doing this thing, for real. A week before I’m not sure I would have said yes, or anything at all, but we’d come too far to give up when things were just getting started. Maybe if I had enough distractions I would forget that my favorite person in the world was no longer a call away. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

To the untrained eye, Lucas was Lucas again. I didn’t know him very well yet at that point, so I took his assurances at face value, threatening to kick him out if he stepped out of line. Yes, he was incredible, but I didn’t want him to get so lost in being incredible that he forgot everyone else was pretty incredible too. This wasn’t the Lucas Lallemant one man show, as much as he might have been thinking it was. Or hoping, maybe. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Lucas asked me to help him come up with a backbeat for the song he was working on, so I did. More accurately, I sat there and waited for him to tell me what to do, then waited for him to either proclaim himself a genius or an idiot. This cycle went on for hours and days and years. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Imane set up a meeting for us with Charles Munier, the head of Shame Records. Supposedly he was the one who decided to sign us. Even though we’d toured the studios, none of us besides Imane had met him yet, and we were all anxious.

**Yann Cazas:**

Let it be known that when it came to professionalism, Imane and Manon had everyone else beat, making up for what Emma and Baz lacked. It wasn’t that we weren’t all trying, it was just that some of us had different ideas of attire and attitude for a meeting with the man who practically owned us now than others.

**Emma Borgès:**

My first thought meeting Charles was that he was young. That told me everything I needed to know about him. I was sure that he’d likely just assumed this position from his dad, who’d decided it was about time he carried on the family business, or whatever. Matthieu Munier was a big name in the music industry, so Charles probably had everything handed to him without so much as a please or thank you.

I doubted Charles knew what he was doing there, and I doubted he cared, which was either going to be very good or very bad for us.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Where everyone was usually obsessed with Lucas, Charles was obsessed with Manon. She didn’t notice, but I have no idea how she didn’t. It wasn’t like he was subtle  _ at all _ . 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Everyone except Manon and I had already seen the studios we’d be working in, so while they talked, I took it all in. I didn’t expect the business side to be any issue for us or Imane, because she was about a million times smarter than Charles and that meant we could do whatever we wanted to do. They’d technically only signed us for a one record deal, but Imane said that she’d renegotiate once we put out our first record. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Lucas was like a kid in a candy store, and I was relieved. Going into the studio was the only thing that had brought back the bright eyed ambitious boy I’d met months before.

He did get upset that Charles required a producer to work with them, because he claimed he could do it all himself, but I took Charles’ side on that one. I didn’t doubt Lucas could produce music if he wanted to, but he was just getting back into the swing of things, there was no need for him to burn himself out. 

**Alexia Martineau (producer;** **_Fifteen Minutes of Fame_ ** **,** **_Le Premier_ ** **,** **_Minute by Minute_ ** **, and** **_Polaris_ ** **):**

I was the one who listened to their demo and begged Charles to sign them, so I fought tooth and nail to be the one to work with them. Charles was hesitant because I was young, and a girl, though he never would have said that directly, but he finally gave in. I don't think he expected much from them or from me, so he was just trying to appease everyone.

Once I met them in person I knew it was meant to be. They were just like me, young, talented, and a bit out of their depth. Also they were all really hot, which should have been illegal. How was I supposed to work in close quarters with seven of the hottest people I’d ever met and  _ not _ fall in love with all of them? Oh, past Alexia, so naive. 

Getting to know them made it easier not to fall in love with them.

_ (Alexia laughs) _

That sounds so bad, but I don’t mean it like that! It’s a vibe thing, you know? Like, would I have hooked up with It Girl Manon Demissy if I met her backstage at a concert and she agreed to it? Yes, of course. But would I have hooked up with lonely guitarist Manon Demissy whose biggest role in the business at the time was wrangling her dumbass brother? No, but that didn’t make me like her any less. I loved all of them like my family. Still do. 

**Basile Savary:**

Alexia didn’t really like me at first, which was totally my fault. I think I said something dumb about the fact that she had pink hair when I met her, that she didn’t fit the image of the band with her cotton candy hair and unicorn sneakers.

I was just trying to sound cool, like a rockstar. Daphné’s swift elbow to my ribs informed me of my mistake quite well. I felt really bad about it, I actually really liked her hair and her unicorn shoes. She made me work for her forgiveness, but it was worth it. Alexia’s the best.

**Alexia Martineau:**

I wasn’t actually mad at Baz, but I knew that if I wanted them to take me seriously, I had to act more in charge than I felt. I’m only a couple years older than all of them, I was twenty-two at the time they came in for the first time, so I had to send the message that just because I looked like I did and didn’t have much experience, they couldn’t walk all over me. They didn’t have any experience either, I reminded them.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I always envied the way Alexia was so unapologetically herself. She was special, the kind of person you meet once in a lifetime. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Alexia keeping Basile in check was one thing, Alexia keeping Lucas in check would be another. I decided that I’d believe it when I saw it. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Alexia’s crush on Lucas was really obvious, but it was kind of funny, so we all just let it happen. None of us thought anything would come of it, Lucas didn’t seem the type to get distracted by romance. Or so we thought. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was riding the high of seeing the studios, realizing how close we were to doing what we loved, so I decided to call Chloé after our meeting. Her younger sister picked up the phone, but I thought it was her because we’d literally only spoken twice. She gave me shit for it later and I knew I probably should have been embarrassed but I honestly just didn’t care enough to feel one way or another. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Lucas tried to sneak off onto his date without any of us noticing, which meant that we all noticed. He wore that dumb denim button down of his that he always wore when he was feeling ‘fancy’. It did tell me that he was at least a little bit serious about whoever he was seeing, though. If he didn’t care he wouldn’t have made an effort at all. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I thought it was good that Lucas was going out on a date. Dude could’ve used a little extra love at the time, and if there was a girl he liked that was willing to give it to him, all the better. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I took Chloé to the movies so I wouldn’t have to talk to her. She talked the entire time anyway. A couple people recognized her there, actually, which we were both surprised by. She was well known in France, but not so much in America. She acted all bashful and humble in a way that told me she was anything but. I didn’t mind that, actually, that she was used to being fake. I guess I could relate. 

Manon was waiting for me to spill all the details when I came home but there weren’t really any details to spill. I held her hand because she wanted me to, I bought her ticket because I was supposed to, and I walked her home because it was the nice thing to do. We kissed and I felt nothing. I thought that was how all kisses were meant to feel. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Yeah, Lucas was very much not into her, but I genuinely think that he thought he was. Or maybe he was just trying to convince himself that he was.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Yann, Arthur, and Basile were acting like they weren’t interested, which told me that they were very interested. I figured I didn’t owe them details, they didn’t tell me anything about their love lives. Not that I really cared one way or another. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Of course I wanted to know what was up. In the nearly five years we’d been friends, this was the first time he’d ever shown interest in anyone. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I don’t know why I was so interested, but my curiosity was piqued. Before his mom died, Lucas would go into detail about anything and everything, never shutting up for more than two minutes, and I guess I was still used to that. He wasn’t a secretive person, but he was. 

Like, I’m not sure I knew a real thing about him for years, but I knew everything else, you know? I knew Lucas Lallemant, not Lucas. I was pretty sure Lucas had gone on that date with Chloé, and I wondered what made her special. 

**Basile Savary:**

I just wanted to know that one of us was getting some action. Girls never looked at me the way they looked at Lucas. If he had a girlfriend, maybe he could send some of his admirers our way.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I’d always had some trouble sleeping, more so after… Anyway, the night after my first date with Chloé, I didn’t sleep a wink. 

There were a million thoughts running through my head but I couldn’t discern any of them well enough to worry about one at a time. I assumed it was just the jitters of having a crush. I assumed it would go away.

**Arthur Broussard:**

We forced Lucas to soundproof his room with egg cartons after a week or so. We hadn’t realized that him becoming a functioning member of society again would mean that he would stay up all night making music. 

**Manon Demissy:**

It worried me that he wasn’t sleeping. He never seemed tired the way he had when he wasn’t talking to anyone or doing anything, but I was afraid of the crash, because I knew it would have to happen at some point.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Creatively, I was on a roll. All the song ideas I’d had over the years were just itching to come out, and I finally had a use for them. They weren’t as deep as some of my later work or anything, but they were fun to write and fun to play.

I know I’ve always been a decent songwriter, we wouldn’t have been anything special if I wasn’t, but I didn’t get  _ good _ at songwriting until much later. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

On their first real studio day, I thought they were going to take it slow, but Lucas came in with a book full of about twenty songs and double that number of musical arrangements. I knew then that working with them wasn’t going to be like working with any old band.

I got Lucas to slow his roll a bit, and once I did that I suggest we start recording one of the songs the band already had mastered, one of the songs from their demo. Shame wanted to put out a single soon to get some buzz generating. It was nearing the end of 1980, and the eighties were already cementing themselves as something wholly different than the seventies, so if we wanted this band to set the standard for what music of the eighties looked like, we had to be ready to do that. 

The band agreed on recording “Seven Minutes in Heaven” as their first single, because they thought it showcased what they wanted their sound to be the best, so we got to work with that one.

**Emma Borgès:**

Lucas was so annoying in the studio at first, because he was terrible at giving up control. He knew exactly how he wanted everything to sound, so if anyone, especially Alexia, went in a different direction, he nearly had a stroke.

**Alexia Martineau:**

I literally didn’t change anything. I thought the song was perfect how it was, I just had light suggestions on where they could add Daph in more, or tone back the drums a bit, or whatever. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

“Seven Minutes in Heaven” is a really special song to me. It was the first time I felt like I was given a chance to shine in the band. I know I was technically there to be a background artist for the most part, but I think Alexia saw something in me everyone else ignored for the most part. Once she pointed it out, they started seeing it. Plus, the violin was one of my favorite instruments to play, and we didn’t use strings aside from guitar in most of our music, but I begged to do it in Seven Minutes, and I love the result.

I really liked the lyrics too, especially the way Lucas and I sang them. We didn’t always get our harmonies right, but it was so easy on that track. It felt like he wrote it for us, not for him. 

The song itself was about friendship, cheesy as that sounds. When he was writing it we all talked about what we wanted to say with the last song on our demo, what we hadn’t said already. “Mon Cœur” was about love, “Under the Sun” was about fame, and it was Emma who suggested, ‘What if Seven Minutes was about us?’ Everyone liked that idea. 

In a way, I guess it could sound like a love song, but that wasn’t what it started out as. Music is up for interpretation by the masses, but that was never the intention. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Baz was on the electric for this one, because I had the main melody, and I started to understand Lucas’ control issues a bit.

_ (Manon laughs) _

It didn’t seem so serious or intense when we were just recording for our demo, but now that we were recording for real I wanted him to play it exactly as I’d imagined it, otherwise I was either going to rip my— or his— hair out.

**Yann Cazas:**

Lucas changed up some of the lyrics last minute. I was worried the rest of the band was going to freak, I was worried I was going to freak, but when I heard what he wanted to say, I couldn’t be mad. It was the closest he’d come to talking about his mom or his state of mind regarding everything that had happened, and we were all ready to hear what he needed to say. 

I guess maybe that’s why Seven Minutes is one of my favorite songs to this day. It meant something to all of us, and it was about all of us. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

“Seven Minutes in Heaven” was a love letter to the rest of the band. I still maintain that I enjoyed our later work more, but yeah, it was a bit special I guess. It was perfect for the time period that we made it in. Any earlier or later, it wouldn’t have been the same. I’m not sure the audiences thought it was our most ‘fun’ song, but I will say that it was always a blast to perform live. 

It was easier to say things, I found, through music. I could pretend I was saying one thing and mean something else entirely. Only the band knew the direct meanings of any of the songs I wrote, and even so, there are still a great many that they don’t know the stories behind.

**Alexia Martineau:**

Imagine how tired I was. We’d nailed a couple takes, and all of a sudden Lucas decided to change a bunch of the lyrics. Why did we let him get away with everything, again?

**Arthur Broussard:**

I think we let Lucas get away with everything because we knew that if he wasn’t in it one hundred percent, it was going to show. He didn’t like the lyrics he’d written originally? Of course we had to change them, was there ever another option? 

I liked the changes to Seven Minutes, I think the changes were why it became a hit. Another diary entry masqueraded as a love song. It was genius, through and through.

**Manon Demissy:**

The bridge of the song was my favorite part. In the bridge, it was just me, Yann, and Lucas, the original three. I could tell Lucas wrote it that way on purpose, because even when we’d originally recorded it for our demo, and Imane suggested we add some keys, he was adamant it was just the three of us. Lallemissy plus Yann. 

He told me later that he put Baz on the electric and me on the acoustic because he knew that I could carry a song, and that Baz would be better at accenting my melody. When he first suggested mixing acoustic and electric in the way that he wanted to, I thought he was crazy, but you’ve heard the song, you know that crazy created extraordinary.

**Emma Borgès:**

I mean, I wasn’t totally pleased with the use of the keys in Seven Minutes, but I did end the song, so I guess that was a consolation. And “Mon Cœur” was practically all keys, so I’d still have my chance to shine. 

**Basile Savary:**

I thought the way we formatted the song was interesting, from a production standpoint. Alexia was actually the one who inadvertently pointed it out to me, but Seven Minutes was kind of hierarchical in terms of who did what.

Lucas, the de facto leader of the group, was obviously the center of attention with his vocals, but Manon was a close second, steady and present the entire time. Yann’s bass breaks the theory a little bit, because Arthur’s drums were definitely more present throughout the song’s entirety, but Yann had the bridge with Manon and Lucas, which was definitely intentional. Emma, Daphné, and I aided the work that they’d laid down. The song wouldn’t have been possible without us, but our contributions were an afterthought of sorts. They were no less important than the rest of the song, but they weren’t the central parts of the song. 

I don’t know, maybe it should have made me mad, but I thought it was kind of cool, the way that turned out. Besides, my part was easily the most interesting to play, the most random, least repetitive. It was sick. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I pulled Lucas aside after we’d finally finished Seven Minutes and told him that he had to respect my authority as producer. I trusted him enough that I practically let him do whatever he wanted to do, but there would be times that he couldn’t be the one running the show, and I needed him to understand that. 

That was when I was introduced to the real Lucas. 

It was like a complete one eighty, he went from cocky, chaotic frontman to sweet, earnest teenage boy in the blink of an eye. He apologized for taking control, and he explained that sometimes he found it hard to let other people step in even when he knew their input was valid and helpful. 

I promised him that I only had their best interests at heart, and if I was going to trust him unflinchingly, he’d have to trust me too. He said that he could do that, because he thought I was really talented at what I did, and he apologized again for not giving me a chance to show it.

That’s the moment Lucas and I truly became friends, and he allowed me into the little Seven Minutes in Heaven family for real. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I felt really bad that I’d made Alexia so frustrated, and I wondered if I’d been making everyone else frustrated. I hoped not, but I didn’t think they would tell me if I was. Although I still wanted to be in charge, I decided to try to take a little bit of a step back so I wouldn’t burn everyone out. I had a tendency to get too lost in the things I was passionate about.

**Manon Demissy:**

By the time the new year came I think we’d recorded about six songs out of the eleven we had planned for our first album. There were still a couple we had to write and tweaking to be done on the ones already recorded, but it all flew by way faster than anticipated.

“Pleaser” was my favorite at the time, because it was one of the most fun to play. It always was, actually. 

There was going to be a party at the Sun, and we’d perform Seven Minutes as it was released as a single on New Year’s Eve. We weren’t sure how a single would do, actually, from a marketing perspective, because people really just wanted albums throughout the sixties and the seventies. Singles were still common in the music industry, of course, but there had to be a promise of an album on the way, and if we weren’t popular enough yet, would the promise of an album even matter? 

I was equal parts terrified and excited. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

My parents wanted me home for the holidays, because they thought I was still at school and I was on winter break. I told them that I’d signed up for winter courses, and that it would be pointless for me to come home for a few days if I’d just have to come right back again. I still don’t know why they believed me but thank fuck that they did.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I’d organized everything to a T. The night would go perfect, or I’d have some asses to kick. Mika assured me a million times over that everything would go great, but I was still cautious. Charles and the rest of the Shame crew would be there, and so would Alexia. Alexia was my buddy for the night, because the band would be more or less doing their own thing.

My idiot brother was supposed to come for moral support too, but he was late as ever, and Mika was not helping my stress by offering me drinks every ten seconds. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

Imane is such a boss that sometimes I forgot she was younger than I was. By the fifth time Mika offered her a shot, I carefully extracted her elsewhere before she could get us kicked out by throwing hands with the bar owner.

Her brother and his friends finally showed up right as the band was getting on stage, so thankfully her complaints were drowned out by cheers. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It was nearly midnight, the bar was full, and I was halfway wasted. Only halfway, because I still had to sing, but enough that I wasn’t thinking about how much I wished my mom was there.

**Manon Demissy:**

I was worried Lucas wouldn’t be able to get his drunk ass on stage, but he did it. I held a little bit of a grudge for a while, I’ll admit, because his antics got to me enough that what might have been one of the best nights of my life was spent praying he wouldn’t throw up all over the crowd.

**Emma Borgès:**

It was so nice to be performing a show again. I loved working in the studio, don’t get me wrong, but I wanted other people to hear us and the work we’d put our hearts and souls into. Granted, we’d only be playing three songs, because the others were to be saved for the album, but it was still exciting. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Right before we went onstage Lucas told us he refused to perform “Mon Cœur”. Given that was one of three songs we were slated to perform, you can imagine how well that went over. He’d been refusing to record it too, for a while, but we all just assumed that was because he was busy working on other songs, not that he wasn’t ever going to record it. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Before a full fight could break out I told them I’d sing it. I knew all the lyrics and everything and no one would know the difference. That way we’d still have three songs to perform  _ and _ Lucas wouldn’t have to sing that one.

Lucas only agreed to it because everyone else did first, and he looked so angry that I was worried for a minute that it’d transfer to his performance in a bad way. But then he pulled a shot from nowhere, slammed it down, and went onstage. 

Manon and I exchanged nervous glances, but we followed nonetheless. 

**Basile Savary:**

I was ninety nine percent sure Lucas was drunk, but if no one else was going to say anything, I wasn’t going to either. I was just there for a good time with my best friends.

**Emma Borgès:**

Lucas said a couple words to the crowd, fake as he always was when he was putting on a show, but the Lucas Lallemant persona didn’t bother me much. He was always a lot less grumpy than the real Lucas. 

**Yann Cazas:**

We started playing. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

They started playing.

**Charles Munier:**

I’d never heard anything like it. It made me think maybe I should be patting myself on the back a bit for having the insight to sign them so quickly, despite their inexperience. Alexia sure did have an ear for talent, it seemed. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Manon enraptured everyone right away, Arthur’s drums falling nicely into place once she’d gotten started. And Lucas’ voice… It didn’t matter that he’d been a pain in the ass moments prior, he was present in that moment, and he was everything to every one of us, band and crowd alike. 

We coexisted so well as a band, it was more natural than anything to play together like that in a way we hadn’t done in too long. My eyes kept catching Imane’s in the crowd and I saw her smiling so wide I thought her face might have permanently been stuck like that.

Alexia had tears in her eyes, and she looked proud of us too. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I saw Chloé, right there in the front row, and my heart skipped a beat, wondering if I should sing to her or ignore her. In the end I tried to pretend I hadn’t seen her at all, and my eyes led me somewhere else. I could barely see the person, they were pretty far back in the crowd, but their eyes were like a beacon, so bright blue every other color in the room paled in comparison. I don’t know what drew my eyes there, but I’m pretty sure they stayed there the entire song. The person didn’t look away either, equally as entranced by me. When the song ended and Daphné was going to take over the vocals, I almost stopped her, so I could sing to that person in the crowd some more.

In the end I couldn’t do it, though, I couldn’t perform that song. The wound was still too fresh. Daphy sang it beautifully, though. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I’m not sure why Daphné sang “Mon Cœur” instead of Lucas, but she did a nice job. I felt that all of us overlooked Daphné quite a bit, and I resolved to stop doing that just because other voices were louder than hers. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

When I stepped back up to the mic for “Under the Sun”, the person in the crowd with the blue eyes was gone. I felt an odd sense of detachment, like something had been ripped away from me just before I could reach it.

**Yann Cazas:**

To everyone’s surprise, there were some people there that remembered “Under the Sun'' from the last time we’d performed there. People were yelling and singing so loud I thought the roof was going to blow off the place. I’m still surprised it didn’t. 

That song was always a blast to perform, the most stereotypically ‘rock and roll’ of our current catalogue.

**Manon Demissy:**

Charles cornered all of us after the show to ensure us that all the hit radio stations would be playing our song in the morning. We didn’t believe him, but I thought it was nice that he was showing some effort to be invested in the band. Most studio heads wouldn’t care, aside from the numbers.

**Emma Borgès:**

Alexia attacked us all with a million and a half hugs, and Mika attacked us all with a million and a half shots.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Chloé attacked me with a million and a half kisses. I’d forgotten she was even in the audience.

**Basile Savary:**

Chloé and Lucas were getting hot and heavy, I noticed. More than I assumed they’d be. They looked really natural together, you know? 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I guess she was my girlfriend, but I don’t remember ever having a conversation about it.

**Manon Demissy:**

Seeing Lucas with Chloé after the show, I kind of understood why he’d been drinking so much with no intention of stopping. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

After the show was over, my nerves were gone, and Idriss suddenly became an annoying tagalong. He was freaking out because his roommate disappeared after the first song, and granted I had yet to meet this roommate, but he sounded like a handful from everything Idriss told me about him. I decided to leave him to figure that out while I went to hang out with the band.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I got so fucked up that night, holy shit.

**Yann Cazas:**

I think Imane was probably the only responsible one left standing by the time we all stumbled out of there, but can you blame us? We were officially a band in the public eye. I mean, we didn’t know if we’d actually get any playtime on the radio, but Charles, Imane, and Alexia seemed sure of it, so that was good enough for us.

**Manon Demissy:**

Imane and I babysat all the drunkies. I had no ambition to partake, and I could tell Imane was grateful. I can’t imagine how difficult that would have been to handle on her own. Thankfully, with Chloé in charge of Lucas, there were only six other hooligans to worry about, not twenty seven, because drunk Lucas was at least ten people just on his own.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Lucas didn’t come home that night, and I had to hand it to him, I didn’t think he’d ever actually follow through with Chloé. 

**Emma Borgès:**

The post new year hangover was death, literal death. Fucking Manon made fun of me and Daph all day for it. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Hey, if I had to put up with their drunk asses, I got to relish in my un-hungover satisfaction come morning.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I think that was the first time I ever threw up from alcohol. I do not recommend it. 

**Yann Cazas:**

When Lucas wasn’t there in the morning I honestly thought he might have died or something. Even though they were hanging over each other all night, I never would have guessed he was with Chloé. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

When I woke up with Chloé laying on my chest, I knew I’d made a serious mistake. I didn’t think we’d slept together, but I didn’t remember much after we performed either. Somehow I’d ended up at her place like I belonged there, even if every fiber in my being was telling me that was the last place I belonged. 

I freaked out, but thankfully she slept like a log, so I was able to stumble out with some of my dignity intact and didn’t have to deal with morning domesticity. I began to wonder if maybe romance just wasn’t my thing, because the thought of waking up next to Chloé and falling asleep next to her day after day made me throw up all over the sidewalk. 

That sounds bad, I admit, but it really had nothing to do with her. I thought that there was just something wrong with  _ me _ . 

**Arthur Broussard:**

When Lucas got back I made some joke about him popping his cherry and he ran to the bathroom to throw up, looking white as a ghost, and that was that.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

A few days later, I was driving to the studio to meet with Alexia. The band had a few days off, though I knew they were probably spending them working on the last few songs for the album, and I turned on the radio, as one does while driving.

“Seven Minutes in Heaven” was playing.

I pulled over right on the side of the freeway and screamed, bursting with ecstasy.

I sped the rest of the way to the studio, after I’d gotten my screaming out, and called the rest of them.

**Emma Borgès:**

Oh, we already knew. It was bold of Imane to assume we’d done anything other than sit at the radio waiting to maybe, maybe, hear ourselves.

**Yann Cazas:**

Whatever funk Lucas had been in since New Year’s disappeared the minute the opening chords to Seven Minutes played on the radio. He listened, left, and came back an hour later with four bottles of champagne.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

No better time to party like when you hear your music on the radio for the first time.

**Basile Savary:**

I called my mom and talked her ear off about it. She was so proud, it made me feel like I was on top of the world. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I drank a big fuck you to everyone who’d doubted me back home. I’m the one that they’d always say ‘Hey, you’re going places!’ to and then expect me to stay right where I was. Look at me now, bitches.

**Manon Demissy:**

Charles called to congratulate us and I talked to him for a while because everyone else was too drunk to be responsible. He was sweet, in those moments. I had a feeling that most of the time he was putting up a front, like the rest of us.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was renewed with new vivacity and drive to finish this album. If we could get one song on the radio, who was to say we couldn’t get them all?

**Yann Cazas:**

Our happiness was short lived. A few weeks after Seven Minutes was on the radio for the first time, we got our first review. Imane was surprised, didn’t think anyone would be talking until we had a full album out. It was just a short review, barely more than a paragraph, but it was published in Rolling Stone.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Rolling fucking Stone. 

**Manon Demissy:**

They didn’t say anything bad, not really. They actually liked our song a lot, but they thought we wouldn’t have staying power. They said we weren’t rock enough, we weren’t indie enough, we weren’t pop enough. There wasn’t a clearly defined label to what we were, and so they said we’d have fifteen minutes of fame, no more, no less. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Well, well, well, it looked like we had an album title.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

We’d been toying with a couple ideas for the name of the album, and when Lucas suggested  _ Fifteen Minutes of Fame _ , we were all sold. 

**Basile Savary:**

Seven Minutes in Heaven,  _ Fifteen Minutes of Fame _ . They worked well together. Minutes were our thing, I guess.

**Alexia Martineau:**

I worked even harder after the Rolling Stone review, trying to tweak their sound in subtle ways to make it more and more unique. I was supposed to start working with another artist soon, and I wanted  _ Fifteen Minutes of Fame _ to be as polished as possible by the time I had to get working on a new project. I also didn’t want their last few recorded songs to feel half assed in any way, each song deserved equal amounts of care and consideration. They had quite the album, from what I’d heard and worked on. Some songs were chill, some were bangers, some were simply beautiful, and some were everywhere in between. “Breezeblocks” was really interesting because of the outro and the way it led into “Under the Sun”. Listening to Daph and Lucas come up with and execute that outro, then layering it properly was so cool.

**Yann Cazas:**

“Bambi” was the song Lucas wrote right after Imane yelled at him to get his shit together, and it was very clear to me what it was about. That was some of our most experimental production on the album, and I worried it wouldn’t pay off, but it did. Especially with Lucas’ voice on that track, holy shit. “Why Do You Feel So Down” kind of felt like a lighter hearted follow up to “Bambi”, in my opinion. Not that “Bambi” was particularly heavy, but WDYFSD was a really fun, more upbeat sort of song. 

**Basile Savary:**

“Why Do You Feel So Down” was a bop. Arthur and I would always make up dumb dances to it and sometimes Daph Bean would join us. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I worked relentlessly to get better at every aspect of music. Mostly my vocals, because that was what, if we made it, I’d be known for. I didn’t want to let anyone down, much less myself. I wanted to have a voice worth listening to. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I got to do a lot of vocal work on “Fly”, but not as much on the rest. I understood why, we were trying to build a brand and Lucas was the easiest to sell, but I hoped I’d have an opportunity for one of my own songs on the next album. 

“Mon Cœur” was the last song we were set to record, it was supposed to close out the album. Lucas didn’t want to do it. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I knew I’d never be able to perform that song live, and I didn’t want to. I didn’t want people to listen to a song about my mom and think it was about something else or to expect me to indulge them when they asked me to sing it for them. I could have altered the lyrics to make it more generalized, but I felt that would disrespect my mom’s memory. Plus, it was the first song that I’d ever written that I was really proud of. I knew I was supposed to just suck it up, but I couldn’t let it go. Plus, “Suburbia” would have been just as good of a closing track for the album. It said everything I wanted to say about my youth and where we’d all grown up without pulling at my heartstrings in an unbearable way. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Daphné offered to sing it again, and I was tempted to let her, but I knew that would hurt Lucas worse than him having to sing it himself. I understood why he was so hesitant, it hadn’t even been a year yet since Celine passed, and every day without her was another day adjusting to the fact that she was gone forever. 

Only Yann, Arthur, and I knew it was about his mom in the first place, so we didn’t push him like the others did when it came to that song because we weren’t sure what we would have done or how we would have felt if roles were reversed. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I pulled him aside and I asked him point blank why he refused to record the song. I told him I didn’t want to have Daphné sing it, because talented as she was, it would throw off the cohesion of the album. If it was the second album, if they were already established, maybe we could have gotten away with it, but it was the first anyone would be hearing of them, and they needed unification. They needed a brand, and he was a huge part of that brand.

He kept skirting around answers until I finally told him that this song was the reason I started working with them to begin with. Anyone could write a good rock song, someone great could bring crowds to their knees with a great stage presence and musical ability to match, but it took someone special to be able to pull off what he did with “Mon Cœur”. That song went deeper than words, listening to it felt like love in its purest form. There was barely any production to it, but that was what made it so special. You wanted to listen anyway, purely because of his voice, and the lyrics.

He looked up at me with tears in his eyes and told me that he’d written it for his mom, and she’d never gotten to hear it. He didn’t think it was fair for anyone else to hear it if she couldn’t. 

My heart broke into little pieces, but I picked them up, stitched them back together, and tried to hand them over to him.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Imane offered me her heart in place of my own, because she knew that whatever was happening inside of me was too much for any one person to bear, and I just fell into her arms and cried. It was the first time I’d cried since I first got the news. I’d forced myself not to because I was scared that if I started I’d never stop.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

The next day, Lucas came in on his own. Alexia and I were the only other ones in the studio. He sat at the piano, recorded a few takes of the melody, sang the song once all the way through, and told us that was all he was willing to give. If Alexia could do something with what he’d given, he’d put it on the album, but if she couldn’t he’d write something else. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

It only took him one take, but it was absolutely perfect. I barely did anything to it, other than clean up the piano and match the vocals to the music a bit. I had Daphné come in and add a bit of violin, just to really drive home the emotion and make it the best closing track possible, but that was all it needed.

**Manon Demissy:**

Just like that, our album was done. I was feeling all over the place in terms of emotions, because as excited as I was to hear it all on a vinyl or on a cassette, it was over. We were only signed for one album, and if this one didn’t perform well, if it really was just fifteen minutes of fame, it was all over.

**Emma Borgès:**

I didn’t know how to feel about the fact Lucas had recorded “Mon Cœur” on his own. I mean, I know he was probably more talented on keys than I was at the time, but still. It felt like a betrayal, in some small way. It felt weird that he wouldn’t perform or sing that song anywhere anytime but then he’d randomly recorded it on his own without letting anyone know. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I’m glad Lu recorded the last song on his own. I wasn’t sure if he’d ever do it, but I think the way he went about it paid off. Everyone got what they wanted out of it.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I was still a little upset I didn’t get a solo vocal song on the album, especially because I did love “Mon Cœur” and the way I sang it, but I wasn’t the lead singer, was I? It was Lucas, always Lucas. Usually I was more than fine with that, but I don’t know, that time it hurt a little bit. Mostly because no one told me that I wouldn’t be the one recording that song until Lucas had already done it.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

There was still some fine tuning to do on the record before we could release the album, and we didn’t want to release it until later in the summer anyway, because an upcoming change of seasons would be good for marketing purposes, but we needed an album cover to introduce this band to the world.

Thankfully I had a friend, Jamila, who was a photographer, willing to shoot for free so long as we credited her work, so we got right on that. It was best to keep them all busy and together, I’d realized by then, because when left to their own devices they nearly caused me a stroke every other day.

**Jamila Nadir (photographer):**

They had no idea how to pose for photos.

**Basile Savary:**

I didn’t know if we were going for a sexy rock and roll vibe, or like a friendship vibe, so I just tried to copy whatever Lucas did.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Taking a photo should not have been that hard. 

**Manon Demissy:**

We didn’t have much money, so we couldn’t hire stylists or anything like that, and we all looked horribly mismatched on a daily basis. As far as the boys went, Lucas was the epitome of cool, Yann followed trends without meaning to, but in a more understated way, Arthur’s style was either everything or the most boring, basic thing I’d ever seen, and Baz was a mess and a half. I’d say that as far as trends went, I wasn’t always on top of them, but I knew my aesthetic and what styles I liked and didn’t like. Celine always had a very Parisian way of dressing, and I think I unknowingly inherited that from her, though I wasn’t French myself. Well, maybe I am, I truthfully don’t know much about my ancestry. 

I was also able to adapt my style to work with the other group members, though there was such a wide range between the seven of us that it was very hard to do sometimes. Daphné was and remains to this day the height of femininity. Her femininity never felt forced, though, it always felt natural, and I think that’s why she wore it so well. Emma was the opposite, a tomboy of sorts. She and Arthur reminded me of one another a lot in terms of style, which worked for them sometimes and clashed horribly other times. Where Daphné refused to wear anything but dresses and skirts, Emma would rather have been dead than have been caught wearing a dress or a skirt. 

No one paid as much attention to style as I did, but I knew it was an essential part of our band. Music could only take us so far, we had to have the right image to make it all the way. Maybe it was shallow for me to be thinking that way, but it was true, wasn’t it? I’m sure there have been a lot of fans over the years that just liked us because Yann was hot, or Daphné was pretty, or we wore the right clothes at the right times. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I styled them for the shoot, because they looked like they’d each stumbled off the set of a very different tv show when they got to where we would be shooting. They complained like little kids the whole time,  _ Alexia this is itchy, Alexia I’m not wearing makeup, Alexia this is too tight _ . I nearly strangled them all.

I just thought it would be fun to do something thematic for the album cover, and I had a friend who worked in costume design for films, so she let me borrow a few things. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Our first album cover shoot was so fun! Alexia had the idea to dress us up like old Hollywood starlets to go with the  _ Fifteen Minutes of Fame _ theme, and I loved that idea so much. I’d never worn a gown like that before, I felt like a princess. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I felt like I looked ridiculous. 

I know that I’m well known for not shying away from some bolder fashion statements, but little eighteen year old Lucas Lallemant liked his jeans and the occasional denim shirt if he was feeling fancy. I guess I owe my later fashion expertise— if it can even be called that— to Alexia catapulting me out of the box, turning me from some guy in a band to Lucas Lallemant, frontman of Seven Minutes in Heaven.

**Alexia Martineau:**

Lucas was hot, he had to show off a little bit. I was tired of seeing him in the same goddamn denim shirt.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Alexia dressed me in a light powdery blue suit with very light silver decals on the lapels and down the sides of either leg. She told me the color would make my eyes pop. She also wanted me to go shirtless underneath my suit jacket but I vetoed that. I didn’t think I could rock that look quite yet. 

We compromised on a white v necked t shirt tucked into the pants, which were more high waisted than I would have preferred but she had a look on her face that if I argued more she’d use me as a human pincushion. I guess I pulled off the high waisted look somewhat decently.

My hair was longer than it had ever been, mostly because I’d been too distracted to get it cut properly and I didn’t trust any of my friends to do the job, but I guess growing it out ended up working in my favor, because my hair pretty much became a staple of my being. 

_ (redacted) … _ calls it my hedgehog hair, but [they] didn’t know me back when it was actually hedgehog hair, in high school. It was shorter but it stuck straight up in mini spikes without me doing anything to it. My hair has always had a mind of its own, but once it grew out long enough to not stand up in spikes, and looked more ‘artfully messy’ as I like to say, that was when my hair became a  _ thing _ . 

Ridiculous is what it is, but I did love head banging onstage with my hair going all crazy. Gravity didn’t always win, but it didn’t always lose either. 

**Yann Cazas:**

My suit was black, but I had a yellow turtleneck underneath and a couple big silver rings to finish out the look. I probably complained the least out of everybody for two reasons. One, I knew that this was just part of what we’d have to do for the job, and it wasn’t like Alexia’s idea was bad by any means. It was actually a really good idea. Two, I loved that outfit. I stole that yellow turtleneck after the shoot and pretended that it got ripped so no one would ask for it back. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I really didn’t want to wear a gown. Like, really, really didn’t want to. It wasn’t my vibe at all, and I knew Alexia knew that, but we were all victims to the wiles of gender constructs when it came down to it. To her credit, Alexia didn’t put me in a poofy ball gown. She gave me a dark green silk slip dress with one of those fancy fluffy wrap things to wear around my shoulders. I don’t know what they’re called, that was the only time I ever wore one. 

In the end I truly didn’t hate it, because it was the most ‘me’ I could have been under those circumstances. Alexia said it was old Hollywood, but I got a sense that there was a dash of Holly-weird sprinkled in. None of the boys' outfits were old Hollywood, really, but it didn’t matter much. I preferred their unique looks to simple black suits. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I dressed the boys as extravagantly as the girls because I thought it was stupid if they just wore some plain black suits and let the girls do all the work looking good. Not that they wouldn’t have looked good in plainer outfits, but there always has been and still is such a double standard in men’s dress versus women’s, and I wanted to break that barrier, just a little bit. Show that we weren’t afraid of doing things a little different.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Alexia was so much more than just a producer, I’m so glad we found her. Or, technically, she found us. I was also glad I’d cemented myself as manager before we’d met her, because she definitely could have given me a run for my money if she’d wanted to. 

**Basile Savary:**

My pants and jacket were a bright, aggressive orange, and my shirt was a short sleeved white button down with a smattering of multicolored flowers. I’d never worn or seen anything like it, and at the time I was worried about it looking too flamboyant. Deep down, I didn’t really care, but I didn’t want the world to see me as some sort of girly boy or something like that.

I know, I know, toxic masculinity blah, blah, blah. You must remember: this was 1981, and I was nineteen, and Manon, Imane, Daphné, Alexia, and Emma hadn’t yet taught me everything I needed to know about the patriarchy and how to dismantle it from the inside. 

In any case, I didn’t argue much with Alexia because Lucas’ outfit, at least, was much more flamboyant than mine. So was Arthur’s. I only freaked out when they tried to do my makeup, because I’d never considered that would have to happen. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I mean this in the nicest way possible, but men are such pussies. Yann was the only one who took his makeup like a champ, and I think it’s because he was feeling himself enough in that yellow turtleneck that he didn’t notice much else. Plus, he’s always had the best skin of the seven of them, so there wasn’t much to do. 

When I think about the rest of them, maybe old Hollywood wasn’t exactly the right way to describe it, because we were actually quite ahead of our time, but I mostly just gave it that name to stop them from questioning me. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I have no idea how my outfit constituted ‘old Hollywood’, but it was something all right. I had a silky short sleeved dark blue top with a ribbon bow at the neckline, like something fucking Beethoven would have worn, with white patent leather bell bottomed pants. You know, the kind that are all shiny and plasticky looking? To say it was ‘a look’ wouldn’t even begin to cover it. 

_ (Arthur laughs) _

They also wouldn’t let me wear my glasses for the shoot, so if I look extra broody in the photo, it’s because I was squinting real hard due to the fact I couldn’t see shit. 

I complained a lot, but it was mostly because everyone else was. I didn’t mind it all that much. Sure, it was way out of my comfort zone, but I’d loved Bowie for as long as I could remember, and he did way crazier stuff. If he could do all that and still be the icon he was, why couldn’t we?

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I felt like Marilyn Monroe.

**Emma Borgès:**

Daphné looked exactly like Marilyn Monroe. It was kind of eerie, but she looked hot. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I mean, I think that was the point, to look like Marilyn, because I was the only blonde one. Manon looked more Marilyn in my opinion, but I still liked how I looked all the same. I had really long hair then, so we did some side swept diva curls. I had on this long, tight, fully sequined red dress with a massive slit up the left leg and a deep v neck that nearly ran to my waist. And when I say tight, I mean  _ tight _ . I couldn’t breathe practically the entire time, but I guess it was worth it, because I looked good on the album cover. 

_ (Daphné laughs)  _

**Manon Demissy:**

I think Daph, Emma, and I were all variations of Marilyn. I’m not sure what the hell Lucas, Yann, Arthur, and Basile were supposed to be, but everyone was more cohesive than I’d expected, in a chaotic sort of mismatched way. It matched our vibe nicely.

I had something that I think was supposed to look like  _ the  _ Marilyn dress, you know, the white one, pleated tea length skirt, deep v with a halter around my neck, so tight around the waist I think my internal organs got a bit squished inside there. I had tight Marilyn curls too, because my hair was short enough to permit it at the time, though it was dark brown instead of blonde, and the pop of red lipstick that became my trademark. Lucas had his hair, I had my lipstick.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Thank Allah Jamila was so patient. I would have left them to fend for themselves by that point, I’m pretty sure it took at least four or so hours to get everyone ready. The photos were stunning though, everyone agreed, and it made all the pain of the day worth it.

We were in this gorgeous space that looked like a palace of sorts, so their attire fit right in, and it made posing them all the more fun. In the end we had way too many photos to choose from, but I’d rather have had that issue than the opposite. 

We chose a group shot of them all posed stiffly, some standing, some sitting on various furniture, staring directly into the lens of the camera stone faced and cold, like monarchs of sorts for the front of the album. A lot of discussion went into what exactly we wanted to do to tie the concept with the album title and the band’s vibe as a whole, so we chose that picture to represent them during the ‘fifteen minutes of fame’ and the back cover was supposed to represent after. 

The back cover was wild, to say the least. Each of them chose a vice, or an emotion, something associated with fame and what happened when people let it get to their head only to crash and burn, and we photographed them in the throes of whatever it was they chose.

Alexia got her way and Lucas had his shirt off for that one, jacket discarded next to it in a pile beside him as he laughed gleefully, staring at something just out of sight. He had a pen in his hand, an autographed signature written all over his body. Manon had her lipstick smeared across her face and her hair ruffled up into a mess, leaning against a bookshelf. I actually spoke to her before she decided what to do, wanting to make sure she was comfortable with the connotations. The world wasn’t the nicest to women who appeared ‘impure’, and even if only a few people bought this album, many would see it, and they might think unsavory things about her, or fantasize about having their way with her. I didn’t want her to have to deal with anything like that.

**Manon Demissy:**

I really, really appreciated Imane’s concern. So many other managers would have been the ones to suggest my pose, or have me doing something ten times more provocative, catered to the male gaze, but she had my back. That was why I felt comfortable doing that, posing that way knowing the connotations. If Lucas had decided to strip to his underwear and ruffle up his hair like he’d just had sex no one would have batted an eye, so I did it for that reason too. I could do anything a man could do, and I could do it better. Fuck them if they didn’t like it.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Arthur and Emma played off one another, he was smoking, she was drinking. His shirt was wrinkled all over and she’d lost her pashmina, one strap on her dress slipping close to the edge of her shoulder. Basile laid across one of the sofas with a tray of food in his lap, dangling a french fry into his mouth with one hand and raising a bell above his head with the other. Daphné stood in front of a mirror, looking into it as she held a smaller one in her hand. We redid her makeup so it looked like some sort of botched cosmetic surgery on one half of her face, the side that wasn’t reflected in the mirror from the angle Jamila shot at. Yann went straight to the point, stuffed his pockets with money— it wasn’t real money, we didn’t have much of that; Alexia painted some fake bills and surprisingly they looked realistic— and held a wad up to the light, half fanning himself with it, half counting it. 

There was a big chance it would send the wrong message, or that people wouldn’t get what they were referencing with the connection of the album artwork to the album title, but that was a risk worth taking, we decided. All that mattered was that we liked it, and that we thought it fit the band. 

**Emma Borgès:**

Original discomfort with my outfit aside, that was a really fun shoot. Probably because there were no expectations and we could do whatever we wanted on our own time. The perks of getting a bottle of champagne to ‘pretend’ to drink in some of the photos was that there really was no pretending to it. Imane wouldn’t let Arthur smoke weed, so that was a bust, but cigarettes were fine too. I was never a huge fan, but if they were there in front of me I wasn’t going to say no. 

Yeah, yeah I know, smoking is bad. I grew out of that habit, don’t worry. 

**Basile Savary:**

I chose the best pose, because everyone else was starving by the end of it all. Me? I’d downed two burgers and some fries, I was doing just fine. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

In retrospect I realize that covering myself in my own autograph was probably not the greatest move, especially because I’d worn a t-shirt there and I had plans with Chloé that night, but it gave me an excuse to cancel. So, there was that.

**Yann Cazas:**

Mmm, still thinking about that yellow turtleneck…

**Manon Demissy:**

I was so tired after the shoot, way more tired than I was after performing. I think it’s because when I performed I felt like me, like it was weirdly the only time I wasn’t putting on a show. The photoshoot was the exact opposite, but not in a bad way. I kind of liked pretending. Well, that kind of pretending, where I knew it wasn’t me trying to hide or push things away. It was a sort of pretending that allowed me to be someone else for a while even though I knew I was still me deep down.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

They wouldn’t let me keep my red dress. I tried, but alas. It made me feel more like who I was inside my mind, you know? Or maybe not who I was, but who I could be given some time, or in another life. I don’t know, it probably sounds ridiculous, but that was my train of thought. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I did smoke weed, while Imane wasn’t looking. She probably noticed, or maybe she didn’t, but either way, I got a great high out of it and forgot about my shiny leather pants.

**Alexia Martineau:**

The shoot was a success and I was so proud, honestly. Not only that we got some great shots, but also that we got the seven of them to stop complaining and cooperate enough to make something really cool.

**Charles Munier:**

I didn’t like the shots they showed me for the front and back cover of the album. I thought, and still think, it sent the wrong message. No one would want to listen to a band that had lost its collective mind, and that’s what the back cover picture looked like. Manon… I spoke with her separately about her contribution. She didn’t want to be that kind of girl, I know she didn’t, she was so much better than those types of people. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I appreciated Charles’ concern, but I could do what I wanted to do. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with ‘those types of girls’. As far as I was concerned, all girls were quite brilliant.

**Emma Borgès:**

Funny how Charles didn’t have an issue with me downing a bottle of champagne in the picture, or with Arthur smoking what was supposed to be weed. Funny how Daphné’s dress was a whole lot more revealing than Manon’s and he didn’t have an issue with it, funny how Lucas was literally shirtless and that wasn’t a problem. Lots of things with Charles were so  _ funny _ .

**Alexia Martineau:**

I didn’t know Charles too well personally, but if I mentioned in passing that Manon had a boyfriend so he would stay away from her, that wasn’t anyone else’s business. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I didn’t like Charles much, he hadn’t given me a reason to, but other than having some backwards ideas he didn’t deserve my hate. Emma was vocal about her distrust, because she thought he was trying to get into my pants, so I trusted her, but I also trusted myself.

He thought I had a boyfriend, for some reason, and I just never corrected him. I didn’t see the point in it. He told me that was why he was concerned about how I was coming across in the picture, that my boyfriend would be upset about it. I told him that any  _ real _ man wouldn’t give a shit and would let me live my life how I wanted to live it, and that shut him up for a little while. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Imane had us all come into the studio once the albums were manufactured, so we could get a look at them before our release. They were so goddamn beautiful.

**Yann Cazas:**

They were just records. But they were  _ our  _ records.

**Basile Savary:**

It made everything so much more real and exciting. I also rocked the orange suit way better than I thought that I had.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

The release and the release party were scheduled and the day was exactly a year after they’d signed with me. I thought it would be a fun little thing to do, because the rest of the world wouldn’t think that day had any significance. I wasn’t thinking, I hadn’t realized… 

**Manon Demissy:**

The album was set to release on the anniversary of Celine’s death. Lucas acted like he didn’t know, but I knew that he did. I was the one who told Imane, and she immediately tried to reschedule everything, but it was too late. 

It was surreal to me that it had already been a year. I hadn’t noticed how much better Lucas had been coping either until he wasn’t again. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I won’t take all the credit for Lucas going off the rails, because some of that was on him, but I won’t give him all the blame either. I felt like such an idiot, even though Manon assured me that it would be ok.

**Manon Demissy:**

Imane couldn’t have known, Lucas hadn’t even told any of us the exact day it happened, I just knew because I was a part of the family. I just hoped it wouldn’t get as bad as before, that he wouldn’t stop talking and being himself.

**Yann Cazas:**

Manon told me about the day, and told me I should keep an eye on Lucas. I agreed, because I felt like I’d failed him before and I didn’t want to do that again. To the untrained eye, he didn’t seem fazed in the slightest. I brought it up once, asked how he was doing and if he needed anything, and he just looked me in the eyes with a serene smile and said, “I’ll be ok, Yann. Thanks for your concern.”

See, that was a red flag because Lucas didn’t ‘thank people for their concern’ and he definitely didn’t smile all peacefully when someone offered him help. Letting people help him was like pulling teeth, and he was taking my offer way too calmly to have been dealing with everything properly.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I didn’t know what was going on, Lucas just asked to smoke more consistently and I was on board with the idea. Maybe that makes me a bad friend, but…

_ (Arthur shrugs) _

I learned early on that Lucas is going to do whatever he wants whether he has your permission or not, so I figured if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

**Yann Cazas:**

Release day came anyway, and while everyone else was out of their minds with excitement, Manon and I were out of our minds with worry. I knew Lucas had been smoking more with Arthur, but we also knew that he’d been spending more time with Chloé. It was understandable that he’d be processing and going through a lot of emotions, but I thought that maybe Chloé was helping him, because he did appear ok, more so than he had when we first found out the release day. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Chloé was just another way for him to avoid confronting his feelings. Yann thought at the time that she was helping him process them, but I knew Lucas better than that.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t have to think when I was with Chloé. All I wanted was to stop thinking.

So, I brought her to the release party. I wasn’t the only one with a date, Arthur brought someone he’d apparently been seeing for a little while, I don’t remember her name, Emma brought some dude that she ditched immediately upon arriving, and Yann was dating some wannabe journalist named Ingrid at the time. We all hated Ingrid.

**Yann Cazas:**

Yeah, Ingrid sucked. I’ll take the L on that one. I think she ended up becoming an author, though, because I remember she reached out to me years later because she wanted to write a book about our band. I turned her down, obviously, since this is the first I’ve spoken publicly about Seven Minutes in Heaven since… you know. 

**Emma Borgès:**

Oh my god, dude, fuck!

_ (Emma laughs) _

I totally forgot about that. Marlon, was that his name? Jonas? Yeah, I really don’t remember. I met him at a bar the night before, and I kind of assumed everyone would bring a date, so I brought him. Turns out Yann, Arthur, and Lu were the only ones who brought real dates. Well, Chloé was the only  _ real _ date, if you asked her. She’d tell everyone who would listen about how Lucas was her boyfriend and how they were going to be together forever. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Yeah, I… I know. She didn’t know about my mom, though, and that was all I wanted that night. It was supposed to be the best night of my life, but how could it have been? Yann’s family all came to the party to celebrate with us, as did Basile’s. Manon and I had told Richard not to come, though he wasn’t really  _ my  _ family, was he? Arthur’s family still thought he was in LA for uni, he’d told him he got a job on campus over the summer so they wouldn’t make him come home, so obviously they weren’t there. I never knew much about Daphné’s family, but I got the impression that there was some tension there, so I didn’t ask. Maybe Emma’s mom was there too, actually? I’m not sure, I only met her a handful of times total, so it could have gone either way. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I wanted my dad there, I wanted him to see all the hard work I’d done and be proud of me, but I knew it would be a difficult day for him too, so I put his and Lucas’ needs over my own once again.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

My dumbass brother showed up, probably because my parents made him. He was a bit famous in his own right by then, he’d had some good roles in some good movies so he was a recognizable face. I’m not sure if people who didn’t know the two of us together would have ever pieced together that we were siblings, because our careers ran in quite opposite directions, but there was always some overlap, even more so later on.

**Idriss Bakhellal (actor,** **_Life is Now_ ** **):**

It was pretty cool, what Imane had done with the group. She talked my ear off about them all, especially right in the beginning, and with such a chaotic group I didn’t know if they’d ever be able to make it off the ground. That’ll teach me to underestimate my sister.

I was supposed to come with my roommate, Eliott, and my friend, Sofiane, but they were working on something else that night, so I flew in solo. Well, with my parents. They still weren’t on board with Imane’s career decision, especially because she’d deferred university to try to manage bands, but Imane and I both knew she didn’t need university, she’s the smartest person I’ve ever known. 

Nevertheless, they were supportive, which was all either of us could have asked for. 

I also met the rest of the band formally that night. I’d seen them perform on New Year’s, but I think I only met Manon that night, because she was trying to wrangle the rest of the group with my sister.

First came Emma, who I was pretty sure had come in with a guy but started flirting with me anyway. I knew that Imane would kill me if I got with any of her band members, so I tried to avoid that as well as I could, but I still liked Emma right off the bat. She was funny and didn’t give a fuck about what anyone thought of her. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I was so embarrassed when I realized I’d been flirting with Idriss. I was a few drinks in at that point and he was tall, so I figured why not, right? Wrong. Bad idea, very bad idea. He was very nice, let me down easy, but god, I couldn’t look him in the eye for a while after that.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I think Yann had a thing for Emma, even though he was there with that lady who ended up writing a book about Eliott. Ingrid? Ingrid Spielman? He kept looking over her while she was talking to me, and that’s how we ended up getting introduced, because he finally came over and joined the conversation all nonchalant like he hadn’t been working up the nerve for ten minutes. 

He was cool, though, Yann was always the chillest of those seven hooligans. Hooligans, yikes, I’m starting to sound like my dad. They were, though, hooligans to the finest degree. 

I feel like Yann and I would have been good buddies right away if he hadn’t thought I wanted to get with Emma, or whatever he thought. He wasn’t rude to me by any means, he just didn’t let his guard down and let me try to get to know him until sometime during when they were making their second album. Not sure what changed, but like I said, Yann has always been the chillest motherfucker in the game, even if he was a lowkey communist. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I just wanted to make sure Emma was ok. She was pretty drunk, and I didn’t want anything to happen to her. Idriss is a great guy, but I didn’t know him at all back then, so it was natural to be cautious. He was probably the most famous person there by a long shot too, and I’d heard enough stories of famous people getting what they wanted just because they were famous. 

Call me crazy, but that’s why I’ve always thought we should cut that off at the source. Like, I know it’s kind of hypocritical of me, but I couldn’t voice my real thoughts in the fucking  _ eighties _ . Are you kidding me? I would have been blacklisted and burned at the stake, Salem Witch style. 

Anyway, eat the rich. Yes, I was the rich at one point, but I assure you that I would gladly have taken the guillotine for a righteous cause.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Once I started talking to Yann and Emma, Daphné showed up too. Daphné… wow. She was a lot. Everything that Yann was, she was the opposite. He critiqued institutions, she wanted everything to do with them. I’m not saying that she probably came to talk to me because I was relatively famous at the time, but I’m not saying she came to talk to me to get to know me better. 

She was a lot more respectful about it than most people would have been, so I didn’t care. Plus, it kind of made me feel like I was hot shit.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Idriss was the first real famous person I’d ever met. It was so cool! I let myself consider a world where I was as famous as he was, and the thought filled my stomach with butterflies. Fame hadn’t quite lost its allure to me yet, and if I’m being completely honest, it never did. Fame could be a fickle thing, but there were also some really beautiful things about it.

I’m not sure how I didn’t put together the fact that Imane’s brother was Idriss until we met him, but I don’t think I’m the only one.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Basile was simultaneously the worst and best of them. Like, he could be kind of annoying, and the first conversation we had spanned a grand total of five minutes because of this, but the more you got to know him, the more you saw that his exterior persona was just a part of who he was. He was probably the nicest of all of them, the most considerate and caring. Basile Savary, man, you’ve got my eternal respect, you’re a pretty standup dude. Of all the shit I heard about from Imane and experienced myself over the years regarding the band, you caused the least amount of problems, which you deserve some sort of medal for.

**Basile Savary:**

Idriss was so intimidating, holy shit. All girls say they want tall, dark, and handsome, right? I am none of those. Idriss is all of those. No homo— not that homo is a bad thing, I love homo— but Idriss was hot. He  _ is _ hot. Lucky bastard. 

I’m not sure he ever liked me, it was sort of hard to tell with him, but he was always nice to hang out with and have around.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Next was Arthur, who I couldn’t get a read on for the longest time. I wasn’t sure if he was ignoring me when we met, or if it was just too loud in there or something. I didn’t know about his hearing disability until way later, and I’m honestly not sure how many people knew about it at the time of their  _ Fifteen Minutes of Fame _ release party. 

He was always a bit standoffish, but super involved at the same time, like he wanted to be friends with everyone but he didn’t want them to know him on a deeper level. I guess I understood that, I sort of did the same thing from time to time. Imane, Eliott, and Sofiane were, at that point, the only people I let see the deepest parts of myself. One time Daphné told me that was because I was a Scorpio, whatever that was supposed to mean.

**Arthur Broussard:**

My hearing was getting worse, in my good ear. I was fucking terrified, and that definitely didn’t help me enjoy the party. At that point, there was just some ringing in my right ear from time to time, but it was different enough that I thought it might have been a precursor to something more. I was finally faced with the reality that if it got worse I’d have to see a doctor at some point. Of course, for the most part I did my best to ignore it, hoping it would go away on its own. I guess I should have been going to med school instead of playing in a band, huh? 

When I met Idriss, I didn’t realize he’d come to introduce himself to me for like two minutes, which doesn’t seem like long but trust me, it is. I kind of panicked, because I didn’t want to give myself away, so I think I accidentally-on-purpose spilled my drink and found an excuse to leave. I kinda forgot I had a date there for a minute, but she didn’t seem too pressed, she just kept telling me how cool it was to be there at all. We hooked up that night but I never saw her again, and we were both fine with that. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Manon Demissy was something else. She was the one that looked like a star, like she was meant to be right where she was. Since I knew her the best so far, we had a nice conversation, I always had nice conversations with Manon. I may have flirted with her a little bit, but I backed off when she didn’t seem interested. I know how to take no for an answer. 

The studio guy, Charles whatever, I wasn’t so sure about him. He was so blatantly into her, but she either was oblivious as hell, or she noticed and ignored it. Either way, I got where Yann had been coming from with Emma earlier, because I didn’t know this guy but I didn’t trust him around Manon for a minute.

If there’s anything I’ve learned in my life, it’s that cishet white dudes with an excess of unearned power are the ones to watch out for. Cishet white dudes in general too, but the ones with money and power are a different breed. Charles ticked all the right boxes. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I wasn’t looking for anything with anyone when I met Idriss, I had enough to contend with on my own. Maybe in another life we gave things a go, but I don't think we were meant to be in this one. He backed off immediately when I told him I wasn’t interested, and he never tried anything again. I have no regrets in how my life turned out, but Idriss was a big what if of mine for a fair few years.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Last, but most certainly not least. Lucas Lallemant.

Chaos was his preferred mode of operation but fuck if it didn’t suit him well. I got to know Lucas quite a bit over the years, and that boy— man, whatever— was one tough nut to crack. We all had our masks, we all wore them well, but Lucas’ mask ran so deep that he became it for a while, and the real Lucas got locked away for far too long. 

He was with Chloé when I saw him the first time, on New Year’s, and he was still with Chloé at the album release party, so I figured things were going well with them. One look at the two of them together and it was very obvious to me that I had been mistaken, Lucas looked like he wanted to get the hell away from her as fast as possible, but she didn’t notice, too busy cooing over him and reveling in the glamour of being a rockstar’s girlfriend. Or, rockstar in the making.

Lucas had more talent in one finger than I had in my entire body, but he wasn’t cocky about it. I expected him to be, and he was sometimes, but never in an arrogant way. Just in a way that showed that he was aware of his genius, and you weren’t very smart if you weren’t aware of it too. 

He was most definitely high out of his mind when we were properly introduced, but I can’t say I blame him, given his company.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Imane didn’t let me hang out with Idriss for a while after that night, because she thought that I was a hazard to society and didn’t want me fucking him up. She was probably right about that, but I had no intentions of fucking anyone else’s lives up when I could instead fuck up my own. I wasn’t that kind of person, the one with flagrant disregard for other people’s well being. Just my own.

The album officially released at midnight, and no less than ten minutes later I was leaving with Chloé, I just couldn’t deal anymore. With Manon’s worried eyes, or Arthur’s encouraging nods, or Imane’s proud smiles. It was too much.

Chloé and I went back to her place, and we had sex. I can’t imagine she enjoyed it much, even though she pretended she did. She  _ was _ a pretty great actress. I didn’t enjoy it much, but I thought that was just because I was high and sad. 

Before we went to bed she asked if I wanted to try something, and I said sure, so she dug around in her purse for a little tin box, filled with a lot of white powder. I wasn’t stupid, I knew what it was.

But I was stupid, because I agreed to do it with her. 

I’d like to say that was the beginning of a lot of bad decisions, but that implies that I’d ever made any good decisions. My whole life was just a series of bad decisions up to that point, so what was one more? 

**Manon Demissy:**

Our album started selling like crazy. Within the first month of its release we were nearing some of the top charts, unprecedented success for a group no one knew or cared about six months prior. They were still playing Seven Minutes on the radio, and sometimes they’d play some others. “Under the Sun” was a big hit on the rock stations, same with “Come a Little Closer” and “Pleaser”.

A lot of people liked “Mon Cœur” too, much to Lucas’ disappointment.

After about a month and a half, Imane called to tell us Shame had booked us an eight week domestic tour as the headliners. People wanted to see us perform, and they were willing to pay a lot of money to do so. The tour was set to start in September and end in November, which doesn’t seem long now, but we’d only ever played three song shows up to this point. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Headlining our own tour after only one album. I was shocked, we all were, but I was excited more than anything. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I was kind of pissed I was working on another project at the time, because I wanted to go on tour with them as a groupie or something. Mostly I just wanted to hang out with them more, but duty called. I was still really proud of myself though, I was part of the reason people loved them as much as they did. It gave me  _ major _ street cred with Shame, they stopped underestimating me so much after that. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

It was going to be hell to coordinate, but I decided not to think about that for at least a day, and just let myself be proud and excited about the work we’d done, and what this might lead to in the future. Charles was already hounding me about signing them for a longer contract with the label, and I played hard to get just enough to get exactly what I wanted, for them and for myself. For instance, Alexia was a dealbreaker. Either she’d produce all of our records with Shame, or we’d go somewhere else and hire her separately. 

Contracts, for the most part, were boring and made me want to rip someone’s eyes out, but I am nothing if not an expert negotiator.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

We were kind of famous. Kind of really famous. No one recognized me out on the streets or anything, because we’d barely performed live, but I couldn’t listen to the radio without hearing one of our songs. I think they all got played at one point or another, which was pretty rare. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Tour was exactly what I needed. Chloé thought things between us were great, and I had no idea why I didn’t feel the same, so my escape was becoming a hellscape of its own, and I needed a drastic change to help me get by one day at a time. 

**Emma Borgès:**

We still practiced together at the Sun, because everyone wanted everything to be perfect for the tour, and it felt good to get back into that sort of thing, even if we weren’t performing for an audience other than Mika. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

September came in the blink of an eye. One minute, we had the entire summer stretched out at our feet; the next, we were packing to live on a bus for eight weeks.

**Manon Demissy:**

It was so, so strange, but so, so exciting.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

The night before the tour, Chloé told me she was pregnant.

She wasn’t, but I didn’t know that until weeks later, when she called me on the road and told me it was a false alarm. We’d slept together probably two more times since the release party, which was more due to my hesitation than hers, not that she ever picked up on it, but I’d always used a condom, and she told me she was on birth control, but I knew that accidents happened. I just never thought they would happen to me. 

I was barely nineteen, how was I supposed to know what to do with a baby? I considered telling her that I didn’t want it, but then I felt shit for even thinking that way. I mean, it was her body, she could do what she wanted, and if I just left, I’d be no better than my father. So, I decided I’d do whatever had to be done to be the best dad I could be. After tour. 

During the tour… let’s just say my coping mechanisms have never been very healthy. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Lucas started acting super weird again right when the tour started. I had no idea what it was, and he wouldn’t tell any of us anything, pretending he was just nervous about touring, which we all knew was bullshit.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Lucas came to me more and more for a weed hookup, and I had to remind him that just because I had a nice stash back home, I wasn’t a dealer, and while we were on the road I didn’t want to do anything that could jeopardize our success. I didn’t stick to those morals entirely, especially not later on in our careers, but it was a nice thought for me to have, I guess.

_ (Arthur laughs)  _

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Everyone was always so fucking focused on Lucas when they should have been focused on themselves, or the group as a whole. Like, I know he was going through a lot, but so was everyone else. The world didn’t revolve around him, even though everyone acted like it did.

Then again, if everyone was acting like it, maybe the world did revolve around him. Oh, to be a conventionally attractive white boy in America.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I really didn’t want to have to kick Lucas’ ass for real. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I know I should have told them, I know, but I couldn’t. They’d chide me for not being with Chloé, or want to be involved in every decision I made going forward. They’d make me be responsible, clean up my act, and I didn’t want that. I wanted to self-destruct in peace.

**Basile Savary:**

The first couple shows went off without a hitch! They were way more packed than any of us were expecting, and the energy those crowds brought was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Sure, most of them were cheering for Lucas, but it felt like they were cheering for me. Manon even let me have some of the more complex guitar work at a couple shows. My favorite to perform live, when she let me take the lead, was “Get it Straight”. That one was mostly just fun.

**Emma Borgès:**

I was so tired after every show, I just wanted to pass out until the next one, but we were in a new city practically every night. I had to take advantage of that opportunity! 

**Yann Cazas:**

Emma and I went out places together most nights. Sometimes the others would join, sometimes they would go in separate directions, but Emma and I had an unspoken agreement to always go together.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Manon and Imane stayed on the bus or at the hotels most nights, and I didn’t want to be doing that, so I tagged along with Emma and Yann for a while, until that too lost its lustre. I love Emma a lot, but sometimes I just wanted to hang out with Yann, without her. He wasn’t acting all concerned about me anymore, even though I’m sure he was, and things felt more normal between us, for the first time since my mom died. I wanted to keep it that way. 

**Yann Cazas:**

If Lucas was going to ignore whatever had him so on edge, I decided I would too. I wouldn’t let his problems stop me from having fun on tour. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

The first tour was when Baz and I bonded on a deeper level. We sort of got to the place Lucas and Yann were at, where we were each other's best friends in the world. I’d never had a best friend like that. It was nice, it was really nice.

**Basile Savary:**

I’m honestly not sure why Arthur and I started hanging out alone more often, but I’m glad we did. He’s still the best friend I’ve ever had. More than that, we’re brothers.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Once again, everyone seemed to forget about me. Lucas, Yann, and Emma had their thing going on, Arthur and Baz had theirs, and Manon and Imane had theirs. It was annoying, and I know Imane and Manon probably would have included me, but I didn’t want to hole myself in every night, talking and playing cards or whatever they did. I was young and hot too, I wanted to party. 

So, I did. I wasn’t going to let being alone stop me. I hooked up with a lot of people that I never told anyone about because I wasn’t sure how they’d take it, but I had some good nights. Some not so good too, but that was what being young was all about. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Daphné took me and Baz out one night. I think we were probably talking shit about how we could always find the best clubs in every city we went to, and she looked at us like,  _ think again _ . Honestly, she was right. I don’t know why we wasted so much time partying without her. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I took them to a gay bar. Yeah, surprise, surprise, I’m gay woohoo. Everyone knows this by now, but I was told to reiterate for the sake of this interview. 

I didn’t know how they’d react, but I felt comfortable enough with myself that I was willing to share that part of me. I figured Arthur and Baz were the safest bets to tell first, which is why I took them out. 

_ (Daphné sighs) _

I should have known better, I should have known they were two of the world’s biggest idiots.

**Basile Savary:**

The bar that Daph Bean took us to is still one of the most fun places I’ve ever been! I tried to hit on a girl, I think, but she told me she was a lesbian so I let it go. That was cool, there were plenty of other girls out there. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Dudes were flirting with both of them left and right, until I think everyone decided that they must have been a couple, and  _ still _ .

**Arthur Broussard:**

I was used to girls dancing and guys watching from the bar, until one of them got up the nerve to try to hook up with one of the girls. I hated it, because I loved dancing, and none of the guys ever danced unless they were trying to impress a girl.

At the bar Daphné took us to, everyone was dancing, guys more than girls honestly. It was such a blast, I felt so free. Not sure what made that bar different from the others, but I’d go back in a heartbeat.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Neither one of them figured out that it was a gay bar. 

_ (Daphné pauses) _

I’m pausing for dramatic effect because there was literally fucking rainbows and glitter and guys and guys and girls and girls making out all over the place and still. They both just accepted that this bar had more eccentric decorations than we were used to, and that was it. 

**Basile Savary:**

Later on in the night I went to find Daphné, because Art and I had lost her at some point, and we found her in the hallway leading to the bathrooms making out with some girl with purple hair. I realized I was interrupting, so I went back to find Arthur to tell him Daph was preoccupied. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Of course Daphné had to hook up with someone the night she decided to take us out. The nerve. I probably could have too, but none of the girls seemed interested. 

_ (Arthur laughs, then pauses) _

Wait, holy shit, did she take us to a gay bar?

**Basile Savary:**

I was always kind of into Daphné, before then, but that was my sign I should just move on. I didn’t know if it was just an experiment, or if she really liked girls, but I figured that either way the universe was giving me a sign that we weren’t meant to be romantically. Maybe in another life. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I wanted to make sure neither of them were weird about the fact that I was kissing a girl, and Arthur just said “love is love bro” and Basile said it was the only explanation for me not being into either him or Lucas. I wasn’t totally sure if he was joking or not, but yeah that’s how I came out to those two.

**Arthur Broussard:**

That’s where her nickname comes from. Daph Bean. We were all pleasantly tispy, mind you, and Basile said, “Ohhhh, so you’re a thespian, then,” when Daph explained her sexuality to us. 

He forgot the word lesbian, naturally, and we all thought it was so fucking funny. Again, we were perhaps inebriated, so she just shook her head all disappointed and said, “No, I’m a less bean.”

_ (Arthur laughs) _

So then I said, “No, you’re a Daph Bean,” and it stuck. It’s really not even that funny, but we couldn’t stop laughing at the time.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Yeah. So I was Daph Bean to them from there on out. Everyone else was super confused, but I kind of liked it. I didn’t need their permission or their approval to be who I was, but the fact that they accepted me without question was so nice. It was exactly what I’d needed, and it made it easier for me to be more unabashedly myself. 

They stopped excluding me as much after that night. And I brought them to more gay bars, even though they still didn’t pick up on it. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Oh my god. All those places she took us… they were all gay bars weren’t they… Did Baz know? No, he couldn't have known, he was more oblivious than me. I should call him, he’ll get a kick out of this.

**Basile Savary:**

Daphné always did find the best bars and clubs. Not sure how, it’s like she had a sixth sense.

**Manon Demissy:**

I was jealous of the bonds that were growing between my bandmates without me. Just because I didn’t want to spend my nights partying. I’d always have Lucas, and I’d always have Emma, but Emma and I had very different ideas of fulfilling lifestyles, and I wasn’t really willing to compromise on that front during the first tour. 

Of course, I had Imane. It was nice, the nights we spent doing nothing or complaining about the others. She would tell me a lot about her side of things, the business and the contracts and all that, and maybe it should have bored me, but I got really into it. I wanted to be informed on multiple sides of this business, not just the creative one. 

Sometimes we’d order more room service than we actually needed and pretend we were living the high life, sometimes we’d stay on the bus and reheat rest stop burgers, but I had fun with Imane no matter what we did. She can come off harsh sometimes, but I know that it’s just because she was so used to not being taken seriously that she had to assert herself in ways that others, especially men, would never have to. 

She’s the reason I got more politically active, especially in regards to feminism, really. I wasn’t really exposed to that stuff growing up, our town wasn’t necessarily conservative, but it was small and set in its ways. Celine, actually, was the one who always taught me that I could be anything I wanted to be, do anything that I wanted to do. She’d say, “You don’t owe them anything, and if they don’t like that, fuck them.”

_ (Manon laughs) _

I really miss her sometimes. I know I’m not as entitled to missing her as Lucas is, but she really was my mom, in a lot of ways. I wouldn’t be who I am without her. 

Imane reminded me of her in that way. Not that she was a mother figure to me or anything, she’s only four years older than me, but I’d never had a big sister before, and I kind of liked it. Lucas was the only person I’d had for a really long time, but he had Yann, and Arthur, and Basile. Emma was a sister of sorts to me too, but it was different. I was the one looking out for her, and I didn’t expect that in return. Imane was the one looking out for me. I just feel bad that I never really returned the favor. Not that she needed it.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Manon’s always been a force to be reckoned with, but I saw her softer side on those nights the two of us spent doing nothing at all. I saw the fierce side of her too, the one that had her reporting a hotel staff member one night because he was harassing me about my hijab. She probably would have knocked him flat on his ass if I hadn’t talked her down. He probably would have deserved it.

**Manon Demissy:**

Daphné would still invite me out every night, though, even if she knew I was going to say no. Sometimes I think that, back then, she was as lonely in the group as I was. Always surrounded by people she loved with all her heart, but always wondering if she was the one that would be left behind. 

I actually think Lucas thought the same thing sometimes, even though it seems ridiculous that he would. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

There was a point in going out with Emma and Yann that I realized I was ending up alone more often than not. I don’t know if they meant to do it, but I think I was too much of a mess for them, they didn’t want me weighing them down. They were probably right to think so.

About halfway through the tour, Chloé showed up. Mind you, this was still before she realized it was a mistake, and that she wasn’t pregnant, so we both believed it to be true. I didn’t want her there, because I knew that would mean that everyone would find out what I’d been hiding and they’d have a lot to say about it. 

They were all as shocked to see her as I was. She didn’t look any different, but seeing her turned my stomach in ways it hadn’t before. I especially didn’t want Yann to know about everything, but I didn’t know why. 

I think it was Emma who asked why she came to visit, and Chloé looked at her like it was the most obvious thing in the world. She said that the two of them were missing me, and that raised some eyebrows.

“The two of you?” Daphné asked, looking around as if someone would appear behind Chloé. Manon understood, I could see it when she met my eyes. Everyone caught on quickly enough after that, congratulating her, us, but also looking at me with worry in their eyes. The cat was out of the bag, so to speak. 

I’m going to be honest, I legitimately don’t know how far along she supposedly was or how she hadn’t noticed that she wasn’t actually pregnant by then, but I’ve never understood much about the female reproductive system in general, so I wasn’t going to question anything. Maybe she just wanted it to be true so bad she convinced herself. I know that she wasn’t intentionally lying, because she was really torn up when she told me that she wasn’t actually pregnant, but I don’t know.

For the time being, though, the biggest thing was that I wanted to be a dad at some point, and I knew that when Chloé had the baby I’d have dropped everything to be the kind of father I’d never had, and that was what terrified me. I’d have given up everything for them, and selfishly I wasn’t ready to do that.

**Yann Cazas:**

The big pregnancy scare of ‘81. Boy does that take me back. Lucas clearly hadn’t wanted us to know, though I’m not sure how it would have stayed secret had it been true.

I saw his face when Chloé told us, and I saw her face too. She hadn’t realized he hadn’t said anything, and she was clearly confused. Needless to say, they got the bus to themselves for a while after that.

**Manon Demissy:**

Lucas looked more scared than I’d seen him in a long time. I was at a loss too. I didn’t know what to do or say.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Chloé was pissed at me for not telling them. I told her that I’d just wanted to keep it between the two of us until the tour ended, but she knew that was bullshit. I was just being a coward, as per usual. She didn’t even stay the night and she didn’t call me again until a week later, when she told me that it had been a false positive, or whatever. Actually, I don’t even know if she ever took a pregnancy test or not. As you’ve probably figured out, I wasn’t very involved at all, which I do feel shitty about, but I swear that if it had come to fruition I would have been there. I know I would have. 

The week in between when she left and when she called was not one of my proudest moments. 

I won’t lie and say that I stopped using coke after that one time with Chloé, the night of the album release party. I didn’t use it like crazy, but I used it enough that it was probably more of an issue than I wanted to deal with. No one knew, too, which was another problem. 

I usually knew how to handle it, and when I did a line or so before going onstage I put on some of the best shows of my life, but there were a few nights in there that I mixed too much coke with too much alcohol, and I ended up being a sloppy mess instead of a professional performer. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Lucas’ behavior was appalling the week following Chloé’s visit. I wasn’t as strict on him as I should have been, because I didn’t know how involved was too involved when it came to the band members' personal lives. 

I offered privately to end the tour early so he could go home and be with Chloé, because that’s what I would have done in his place, but I’m not sure if he even heard me. Lucas had always been a bit heavy handed with the alcohol in the early days, but I started to wonder if maybe he was using something more, and it scared me.

The sex, drugs, and rock and roll lifestyle has consequences, it’s not the fantasy everyone dreams it up to be. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Imane knew I smoked on occasion and she hounded me about supplying Lucas with weed. I told her that yes, I partook in some recreational mary jane on the road, but I wasn’t a dealer, and I hadn’t supplied anything even when Lucas came asking. 

But I also knew that he wasn’t high on weed, and I told her that. I’d never seen him doing anything, but I’d smoked enough in my life by then to know the behaviors of someone high on weed, and someone high on something else.

**Manon Demissy:**

Imane told me she suspected Lucas was using hard drugs, and I freaked out. I wanted to help, but I just couldn’t. My mom had died in an accident, yes, but an accidental overdose, not an accident beyond her control. I couldn’t cope with the fact that Lucas could end up the same as her, that I could lose my mom, Celine, and Lucas before I was twenty.

**Emma Borgès:**

I didn’t care if Lucas hated me, I wasn’t going to put up with his shit. If something terrible happened, or the band fell apart because he couldn’t deal with the fact that he’d gotten his girlfriend pregnant, that was on him. And as mad as I was, I didn’t think he could handle it if that fell on him. I knew him well enough by then to know that his coping mechanisms were some of the worst I’d ever seen.

So, I helped Imane. First we searched for whatever it was he was using, but we came to the conclusion that he must have been keeping it on him, and then we staged an intervention.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I knew they were onto me, so I got rid of all of it. I figured I could find whatever I needed at clubs if I wanted, and alcohol more or less did the trick to numb me to the world. 

Emma and Imane cornered me after I got off the phone with Chloé, the call where she told me she wasn’t actually pregnant. I felt a mix of relief and despair deep in my bones, like I’d been lit on fire from the inside for a long time and someone had just decided out of nowhere to extinguish it. 

**Emma Borgès:**

He seemed eerily subdued when we confronted him, but at least that meant he’d let us talk. Imane told him that she knew he was using something, and that while he may think it was none of her business, it really was, because if he fucked up in any way, picking up the pieces was on her. 

I told him that we all cared about him too much to see him ruin his life. 

He told us that Chloé wasn’t pregnant, I don’t think he’d heard a word we said. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I asked him how he felt about it. He told us that he should be happy, and part of him was, in a relieved ‘I’m only nineteen and haven’t had the best adult male role models in my life to know what the hell I’m doing’ sort of way, but another part of him wasn’t happy. He said that he knew he was a fuck up, but he’d have done anything for that kid, had it come, and that it scared him to feel so strongly for someone who’d never even existed in the first place.

**Emma Borgès:**

I told him to use protection next time, which Imane didn’t appreciate, but it got a laugh from Lucas. He apologized for his behavior, and told us that he and Chloé had been doing coke for a little while before he found out about the supposed pregnancy, and sometimes he still did to take his mind off things. 

I’m not sure if he knew about Manon’s mom or not, but I told him what she’d told me anyway, because I wanted him to see that his actions had impacts on people other than himself. That, yeah, he’d had a rough go of it, and he’d been through some things anyone would have difficulty handling or adjusting to, but he didn’t have any authority on suffering, and it was really shitty for him to think so. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

In a strange turn of events, Emma was the bad cop, and Imane was the good cop. Imane seemed to think Emma was going too far, but Emma was right. I was being stupid, only thinking about myself. A lot of the things I’d dealt with were hard, but everyone dealt with hard things. What mattered was getting through the hard things, and reaching out to others for help when you couldn’t do it on your own. 

Now, I can’t say that I always took that advice to heart, it took me a very long time to accept help in the way the people I loved were always offering, but she planted the seed, and it did grow, albeit slowly.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Lucas’ punishment was joining Manon and I after the shows every night, he was on a strict no partying lockdown. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I accepted my punishment without arguing, because while I was dumb, I wasn’t an idiot. Plus, I’d missed spending time with Manon, and I wanted her to know that I wasn’t going anywhere. 

**Emma Borgès:**

Once Lucas stopped going out with us every night, Yann and I sort of realized he was the only reason we hadn’t… you know… yet. 

It sort of happened out of nowhere, actually. One minute we were just partying, having a good time, the next I had him pressed up against the wall and our tongues were down each other's throats.

Maybe if we would have stopped to think about it, we would have realized it wasn’t the best idea in the world, but there was not a lot of thinking going on from anyone in the band for quite some time. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Kissing Emma for the first time felt so right. That firework feeling people always talk about. I hadn’t realized we’d been dancing around it for so long until it actually happened.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

One night when I was putting the dishes out in the hallway from the room service I’d ordered with Manon and Imane, I saw Emma and Yann coming home. They didn’t see me, they were a little preoccupied, but I saw them alright. 

I was angry, irrationally so. I had no idea where the anger had come from, or why it was there, but I had the sudden urge to put my fist through the wall. Of course, if I did that, it would have caused alarm, and we’d have had to pay for the damages, so I didn’t, but I stewed in silence.

**Basile Savary:**

Lucas was so angry the last couple weeks of the tour, and no one knew why. Imane thought it was because of his party lockdown, but Manon didn’t think so. I didn’t know what to think. I’d seen Lucas exhibit quite a few emotions, but I don’t think I’d ever really seen him angry in that way, a kind that looked like it was eating him from the inside. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I tried to get Lucas to talk to me about whatever was going on with him, but he seemed disgusted to be in my presence, like I was the one that was pissing him off. I asked him point blank if it was me he was mad at, but he maintained time and time again that it wasn’t, so I dropped it, and agreed with Imane’s theory that he was just pissed not to be included in the party scene anymore.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I mean, it was obvious to me why he was acting the way he was, but if you think you’re getting that information out of me, think again. Lucas and I didn’t always get along, but I won’t go spilling his secrets. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

The end of the tour couldn’t come quick enough. As proud as I was of them, and as much as I enjoyed watching the shows, the shows were probably the easiest part of that tour, and that was not what it should have been.

Alexia and I got coffee together the minute we returned, because I had so much to vent about and she was the only somewhat neutral party I could have gone to. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

Hearing Imane talk made me  _ way _ less upset that I hadn’t gotten to go with them, Jesus Christ. Disasters, all of them. 

The good thing was that my crush on Lucas? 

_ (Alexia snaps) _

Gone, just like that. 

It wasn’t that I couldn’t deal with heavy stuff, but I was almost twenty three, he had a girlfriend with whom he’d almost accidentally impregnated, and the kind of genius that requires a bit of crazy. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of crazy, as far as I’m concerned, but Lucas was in no state at that time to handle it, and I wasn’t ever going to babysit him.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Don’t judge me too harshly throughout the rest of this for what I’m about to say. I already know all the mistakes I’ve made and how much of a coward I’ve been, believe me. But during that tour, and afterward when I finally had time to myself to think things through, evaluate what I was feeling and why… why I was so mad to see Emma and Yann together, why everything about Chloé seemed so wrong, even when it shouldn’t have, why I didn’t know who I was when I looked in the mirror.

I realized that I was gay. I  _ am _ gay. Fuck, that’s the first time I’ve ever publicly stated that.

_ (Lucas laughs shakily) _

I mean, there were many rumors, obviously, but I never spoke about any of my relationships after Chloé, and there was the whole thing with some of our unreleased songs and some of the  _ Polaris _ songs… and music videos… and performances… but we’ll get to all of that later. Regardless, I should have done this a long time ago, I know, but I’ve really come to value my privacy over the years, and this is probably the biggest secret I’ve carried, so I didn’t know what I would do without it. It feels good, I think. 

I know people are going to judge me, despite me telling you not to, and you deserve to judge me, I’ve done some really shitty things because I was scared of this part of myself, but if this can help even one kid out there avoid those same mistakes, and maybe even feel a bit more comfortable with who they are, I’ll gladly shoulder the judgement I know I’m about to receive.

You will be proud to know that I broke up with Chloé right after I realized this. I also realized I was a little bit in love with Yann, and that threw me for a loop, but I did break up with Chloé. She did not take it well, nor did I expect her to, but I assumed I’d never see her again. Wishful thinking, I guess.

I do want to put it out there that Chloé is not, and was not, a bad person. You’re hearing these things about her from me, and I have a skewed perception when it comes to most things. Sure, I could find her annoying at times, but she was a really nice, really funny girl most of the time, and I loved being her friend, I just didn’t love being her boyfriend. I didn’t love being any girl’s boyfriend. 

For the next few weeks, into December, I tried to understand myself better, understand what it meant for me to be gay. It wasn’t a word I’d heard a lot growing up, and there was always a negative connotation to it. It seemed like the sort of thing Richard would have called me sarcastically, daring me to defend myself. 

I couldn’t tell anyone, or so I thought. I didn’t want Manon to tell Richard, Imane was religious, Yann couldn’t know I liked him, and I didn’t feel close enough with everyone else to trust them with this thing that I’d barely begun to accept myself. 

I didn’t know Daphné was gay too, otherwise I might have started with her, and everything in my life might have gone a bit differently, for better or for worse. 

For the most part, I sequestered myself in my room, listening to  _ a lot _ of Bowie, and pretending I was writing new music. That was the only way to get them to leave me alone. That, and if I was working, I wasn’t partying, and they didn’t have to worry about me. 

I didn’t do much of anything until the holiday party at the Sun, which I was contractually obligated to attend because it was a party for Shame Records as a whole. The year was ending, and they wanted to celebrate our success, amongst others. Our record wasn’t the best selling of the year, but it was a close thing, and we’d performed better than anyone expected us to. People knew our names, wanted more from us. I had so much going on inside my head I didn’t take the time to appreciate all of it properly. 

**Mika Dolleron:**

Oh, you have no idea how excited I was to host that party. As much trouble as they caused, Seven Minutes in Heaven will always be near and dear to my heart, so when Alexia told me Charles was looking for a venue for the Shame party, of course I had to offer.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Alexia got her friend to let me borrow the red Marilyn dress again for the party, and that was really all I cared about. Baz and Arthur were my dates, looking dapper in their black and white tuxedos, respectively. I bet you can guess who wore which one. 

**Basile Savary:**

I was born to stand out, baby. Everyone else looked so boring, and if Daphné was going to look like a superstar, I had to give her a run for her money, obviously. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Tuxedos were annoying, but it was a black tie event, so I did what I had to do. I was mostly just there to let Daph Bean do all the dazzling, pretending that I cared about all the stuck up music execs and their opinions.

I could not have given less of a shit, truly. I barely tolerated Charles. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Charles apologized to me, at the party, for the way he’d behaved in regards to the album cover shoot. I thanked him, and that was that. I don’t know if he wanted more, but that was all I was willing to give and he seemed to respect that, so when we parted for the night, there was no tension in the air at all. I figured he’d just apologized because we were becoming a big deal, and he didn’t want to be on one of his artist’s bad sides. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I asked Emma to go to the party with me, as a couple, but she didn’t want to do that. I was kind of confused, because we’d been hooking up for a good two months by then, and I’d thought what we had was a ‘thing’ of sorts. She disagreed.

**Emma Borgès:**

I wasn’t looking for anything. For the most part, I liked being on my own, I had no want or need for a relationship, and I didn’t see that changing. The sex was great though, and I did love Yann in a different way.

**Yann Cazas:**

I wasn’t in love with her by any means, but I could see it happening if we’d decided to go for a real relationship. I respected what she wanted, though, and asked where we should go from there. 

**Emma Borgès:**

If Lucas and Chloé’s situation had taught me anything, it was that relationships were messy, and I didn’t want to be messy. I wanted us to just be friends, with a side of fucking.

**Yann Cazas:**

Most people call it friends with benefits, but friends with a side of fucking had a nice ring to it and I agreed with what she said about not wanting things to be messy. So, friends with a side of fucking it was.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

My insufferable brother was at the party because I didn’t want to bring a date and his two close friends would be there anyway, so he wouldn’t be bothering me all night. Plus, it didn’t hurt to up my cred with Idriss at the party. He can never ever know I said this, but people respected me more when they knew we were siblings. 

_ Life is Now _ had just come out, and it was generating a lot of Oscar buzz. If people didn’t know who my brother was yet, they would. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t care about a stupid party, putting on a show and pretending that you cared about all these studio execs who were only in the business for the money. My plan was to hang around with Mika all night, making fun of everyone. I normally would have done that with Yann, Emma, or the two of them, but I couldn’t stand to be anywhere near them at that point. I didn’t trust myself to stay calm and collected in the way I should have. 

My plan worked for about two hours, enough time for me to have a pleasant buzz going. Manon had eyed me carefully when I ordered my first drink, but I assured her I wouldn’t take it too far, and I wouldn’t do anything beyond a little alcohol consumption. She probably didn’t believe me, but I wasn’t lying. 

My plan probably wouldn’t have gotten derailed at all, if I hadn’t looked over when someone walked up to the bar and been dumbstruck by the person standing beside me. He looked at me and somehow I knew. This was the person I’d seen in the crowd that night, nearly a year ago. The same, mesmerizing blue eyes. 

I was a little bit past tipsy, and everything was a little blurry, but those eyes were something I couldn’t forget. 

He asked me why I was staring, and I remember feeling massively embarrassed to have been caught. I probably stuttered out some unintelligible response, and he laughed, and bought me another drink. I forgot about trash talking people with Mika, and I started talking to the new guy. 

Not sure I took in a word he said, and I’m not sure if that should be blamed on the alcohol or my gay panic, but you’d have thought he was the most interesting person in the world based on how I was acting. 

I knew well enough to be careful, though, that even though I’d realized that I was gay, it didn’t suddenly mean that attractive men were also attracted to me and that I could just go around falling in love with whoever I wanted whenever I wanted to. 

Not that I was in love with that guy, I just had a feeling inside that I’d never felt about anyone before. Not Chloé, not even Yann, who I thought at the time that I was maybe in love with. 

The guy asked me to show him where the bathroom was, and I, a homosexual disaster, agreed, even though the bathrooms were literally right behind us and he clearly knew that. No one acknowledged us, though I thought maybe the guy caught someone’s eye in the crowd before he followed me. I’m not sure, things were still a bit hazy. 

We were both in the bathroom, and he locked the door behind us. I didn’t think anything of it, just said something intelligent like, “Welcome to pee town!” 

He laughed like I was funny and not stupid, and then he was crashing into me, cupping my face with his hands and pressing his lips to mine like the world was ending and we were the last two people alive. I didn’t kiss him back at first because I was so stunned and he pulled away immediately.

He looked so unsure, very different than he’d looked the entire ten minutes I’d known him, and I didn’t want that. I wanted him to go back to smiling again, I wanted his eyes to light up, and for him to look at me like someone worth something. 

I pulled him back into me, and I brought our faces close together. He was a fair bit taller than I was, so I had to make him bend down a little bit. I met those blue eyes, saw the gray in the middle of them, turning his gaze icy in a way that was all at once impenetrable and inviting, and I said, “Kiss me again. Kiss me all night.”

And then he smiled at me again. He smiled at me, and did as he was told. 

All night may have been a stretch, because the bathroom had to open up at some point, and the party wouldn’t be lasting much longer anyway, but it felt like a million years in the best way possible. 

This was the feeling I’d been missing my whole life, I felt whole for the first time in a long time while he was kissing me. I felt like me, and I felt like ‘me’ wasn’t such a bad thing to be.

It wasn’t until I woke up the next morning that I realized I’d never learned the mystery man’s name, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see him again. Part of me didn’t want to, because I didn’t want to ruin what we’d shared the night before when the real world came calling, but another part of me wanted to find him again more than anything. 

I didn’t tell anyone about it, I didn’t feel like I could, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I couldn’t sleep, which wasn’t unusual, but it made me jittery and anxious. The more I thought, the more I overthought, and the more I regretted what had happened. Anyone could have seen us, and sure we locked the door, but the two of us were in there a while. He didn’t ask for my name either, maybe he didn’t care who I was, or maybe he wasn’t into me at all, he just saw the way I was looking at him and decided to fuck around with me for some fun. I started to resent the man, blue eyes and all, because he’d stolen the title of my best kiss and left my life as easily as he’d come into it. 

I knew that one night stands were a thing, and that I shouldn’t have been thinking so much about this one guy, but it hadn’t felt like a random hookup. I mean, we’d only kissed. That felt more intimate, somehow, at least to me. 

I looked for him everywhere, from grocery stores to bars to parks and everywhere in between. I began to think maybe I’d been drunker than I thought, and I’d imagined him. I began to resent him, without any real reason to. 

We slipped into ‘82 without fanfare, most of us laying low for the night, and even then I couldn’t help but wonder if my mystery boy was at a party somewhere thinking about me too. I chided myself for being stupid enough to think so, and I was more than glad when Imane came to our place a week after the new year to tell us Shame wanted us to get to work on our next album. I needed a distraction more than anything. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Lucas was acting weird again, in a way that was new to everyone. He was prone to contemplation, to staying in instead of going out, and he took to sitting in the park for hours, as if he were waiting for someone that he knew wasn’t going to come. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I thought he was still broken up about his relationship with Chloé and how it had ended. He hadn’t told me the details, or why they’d called it quits, but I assumed that the pregnancy scare had something to do with it.

I also wanted to tell him about Emma, but he seemed so distant from everything and everyone that I wasn’t sure he’d even comprehend it if he heard me at all. I figured it could wait, at least until he got back in his music making groove. He was always most himself when we were busy making music or performing. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I wrote the first song on our second album in about twenty minutes. It was the only one that stayed the same from the very first time it was played to when we recorded it. In some ways, it was my coming out song, buried under a multilayer of metaphors. In some ways, it was about the boy from the party, and the mark he’d left on me without meaning to. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

When Lucas showed us “Lovers in the Moonlight”, I knew Seven Minutes and Heaven were nowhere near their peak. They were going to keep growing and growing until someday they reached the stars and became one with them. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I had no idea who that song was about, but it put Lucas’ behavior into perspective. I was anxious to see what else he came up with.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It was a new era, and one that I was excited to be a part of. I was still fucking terrified, and I was angry, and I was sad, and I was exhilirated, and I was somehow, at peace. Because I was alive, for real, without anything in my system to help me feel that way. I was feeling things again, and I was letting myself feel them.

My mom might not have been there, but I knew that she would have been proud of me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next week: track 4: le premier - winter 1980 to spring 1982
> 
> fifteen minutes of fame (the album): https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3v77Gn5SFXQiFMtSeS5OHp
> 
> original songs on my tumblr: kieunora
> 
> hope you're all staying safe and healthy, giving you my love ❤️


	4. Track 4: Le Premier - Winter 1980 to Spring 1982

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello lovely humans who read this fic, i hope you're all doing well and that your physical and mental health are staying strong <3
> 
> as with the last chapter, links for songs and playlist will be on my tumblr :)
> 
> (and as with the last chapter, most of the songs on the album are real songs that exist that i'm pretending exist in the context of this fic only lol)
> 
> tw: mention of a panic attack, manic/ depressive episodes, ableist thoughts and words, substance abuse

_ Fresh from his first heartbreak, Eliott Demaury learned to navigate the world in a new way, seeing the things he always saw with a fresh perspective. He was always Eliott Demaury, son of Carlotta and Jacques, LA’s groupie, Camille Pierrot’s boyfriend, always something to someone else, but never something to himself. Now, he’d changed. When he looked in the mirror, he saw a boy with a dream, a dream of his own, not one handed to him by someone else, and he was ready to take that dream with him to the stars. _

**Eliott Demaury (singer, “Le Premier” and “Polaris”):**

Post-Camille, pre-everything else was a weird limbo to be in. I'm sure Idriss thought I was off my rocker more so than usual, but I wasn’t upset or heartbroken, I was just ready to prove nearly everyone in my life wrong. 

It wasn’t that no one had ever expected anything from me, but I think they expected different things from me. If I was going to make a name for myself, it was going to be from following in my parent’s footsteps, or cashing in on my family name, not from following a passion and seeing it through to the end, good or bad.

Writing music, performing it… it was a big undertaking, because now there was pressure. I mean, I hadn’t technically tried to enter the industry yet, and all the pressure was coming from myself, but it was still there. There had been no pressure with Camille, because I didn’t think anything would come of the songs I was writing for her, and I knew I wasn’t going to perform them. I didn’t even know if I was a good singer. 

But, I had to try to figure it out if I wanted this badly enough to lose the woman I’d loved over it. 

**Idriss Bakhellal (actor,** **_Life is Now_ ** **):**

Eliott wouldn’t sing for anyone because he was scared he was bad. Which, we all know is bullshit, obviously. He wasn’t trained or anything, and I think part of him thought that was a requisite for commercial success in the music industry, because Camille had talked to him about training her voice all the time. 

I told him she probably had to because she sucked otherwise, and he ignored me.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I went back to The Palace for an open mic. I hadn’t written any music of my own, but I’d practiced “Blackbird” again, like when I’d sang it with Clara. She was a superstar now, because I’d convinced her to sing that song, and I thought maybe it could bring me some luck too. 

I wouldn’t let Idriss come, because I knew I’d choke if he was there, and I probably smoked an entire pack of cigarettes in the hours leading up to the open mic out of sheer anxiety, but I was on a mission. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Honestly, Eliott is one lucky son of a bitch. In many ways, but mostly in that those cigarettes didn’t fuck up his voice. I always told him to stop, for his voice’s sake, but if anything, they made him sound more angelic. Eliott’s been dealt a lot of bad hands, yes, but along with an equal amount of great ones. I’m sure his lungs aren’t clean as a whistle, but according to his doctors he has nothing to worry about to this day. Natural selection favors the beautiful, I guess.

**Eliott Demaury:**

The Palace was more packed than usual, I don’t know why. It wasn’t any particular holiday quite yet. Christmas was coming soon, but for the most part it was another limbo, the one between holidays where winter wasn’t quite winter yet, and winter wasn’t  _ ever _ really winter in Los Angeles. 

I won’t lie, I was scared. I almost regretted telling Idriss not to come.

Some of the bartenders recognized me, they thought I was there to enjoy the music, not perform it. They laughed when I said I’d signed up to sing, and I wanted to back out even more. 

I’d love to say I’m one of those people that rises to challenge and doesn’t take shit from anybody, but it wouldn’t be true. I got better about it later into my life and my career, but twenty year old me cared so much what other people thought it hurt. 

The patrons of the bar welcomed me onto the stage with many cheers, which I appreciated, even though I couldn’t help but wonder if they were all secretly laughing at me, expecting me to fail. 

Nevertheless, I thought of the dreams I’d had laying in bed beside Camille, the ones of me on stage, with or without her, singing for the world to hear. Singing my own songs, the ones that I’d put my blood, sweat, and tears into. Granted, I wasn’t singing my own songs that night, but that dream was enough to get me going. 

I didn’t know how to play any instruments, so I sang acapella, too scared to ask the previous band to give me a hand. 

**Sofiane Alaoui (manager, Eliott Demaury):**

When I first saw this young kid getting onstage without a band or instrument to accompany him, looking scared out of his mind, I wasn’t expecting much. He enraptured most of the audience right away because he was so good looking, but if he sounded bad I was sure they’d turn on him.

But then he started singing, and it was like he’d just invented music at that moment, for all of us in the bar. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I pretty much blacked out the entire time I was up there, I think.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

People were lining up to meet him before he even got off stage, so I figured I’d take my time. I wanted to congratulate him on such a performance, but I also wanted to offer him my help in sharing his gift. I was twenty four at the time, I’d graduated with a degree in business and in dance, but neither of them were doing me much good at the moment. 

I only came to that bar on open mic nights, listening for something or someone that might inspire me, and at long last, someone had. I had to grab onto that before it was out of reach.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I guess people thought I wasn’t that bad, because a bunch of them came to talk to me afterwards. I didn’t really want to talk to anyone, I just wanted to have another cigarette and go home. 

I ended up sneaking out the back, pretending I had to go to the bathroom, and that was where I ran into Sofiane. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I’d just left, actually, deciding that maybe I was being crazy, waiting there for so long when he looked like he didn’t want to be there at all. Plus, what was I even going to offer him? I wasn’t a real manager, even if I did have a degree.

**Eliott Demaury:**

He congratulated me on my song, said I was a one in a million kind talent. I think I blushed or something, I’ve never been very adept at taking compliments. He said he was looking to find artists to represent as a manager, and wondered if I’d be interested. No pressure, he’d said, I could tell him to go away and he’d never speak to me again. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I really didn’t want him to think I wanted from him what all those other people in the bar did. They weren’t bad people by any means, I’m sure, but it was different. I mean, if he wanted someone to take him to the top, I was sure I could do that for him, but all I really wanted was to find somewhere for him to let his voice be heard.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Talking to Sofiane for the first time felt like I was talking to myself, in a way. We were both dreamers, saw the best in people, and tried to take on the world with care and love. It was an impulsive decision to make, but I asked him to be my manager right there in the alley behind the bar. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I agreed, what else was I going to say to Eliott Demaury?

**Eliott Demaury:**

He told me we’d need a demo to get started, which meant that I’d have to start writing music again. I told him it wouldn’t be a problem, but secretly I was worried. I’d written about Camille because I was in love with her, and there was no pressure to make anything worthwhile. I was afraid I didn’t have anything to write about anymore. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

He spent the holidays cooped up trying to write, even though Sofiane and I both told him to take a break every now and again. I even invited him to dinner with my family, which he refused, not unkindly. He knew how I was about people meeting my family, both because of our religion and the issues he’d faced in the past, but they did really want to meet him, I’d been living with him for five years at that point. 

Sofiane and I became fast friends too, because Sofiane spent a lot of time with Eliott around our place, and I was in between projects, so I subsequently spent a lot of time around the apartment. 

He and Eliott were a lot alike, which worried me, because I didn’t want their heads to get too far up in the clouds that they forgot music was a business. Sofiane was good for Eliott though, and I’m glad they ended up together over someone who placed too much of a value on the business aspect of the music industry.

I’d almost recommended Eliott try to work with Imane, my sister, but she’d just gotten some band she was working with signed to a record label, and they were in the midst of creating an album, so I figured she had enough on her plate.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I was glad Idriss and Sofiane got along so well, even if sometimes it made me feel like a third wheel. It’s like when you have two good friends and you introduce them, thinking you’ll all be friends together, but then they become better friends and you get left out. Not on purpose, but it happens nonetheless. 

Thankfully Idriss was busy enough with his own work for them to get too close, but I still felt they liked each other more than me. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I’d had some friends in college, but we’d mostly lost touch, and with Eliott and Idriss I fell back into a rhythm I’d been missing. I tried to stay at arm’s length with Eliott at first, because I thought it was important for us to remain as professional as possible, but I embraced my friendship with Idriss wholeheartedly.

He invited us to some event at a bar called Under the Sun for New Year’s, and I practically dragged Eliott along, forcing him to stop overthinking the work he’d done so far on some songs. He wasn’t as far as he wanted to be, he’d written one song in full that he felt comfortable enough with to even think about moving on, but I could tell he wasn’t entirely sold. 

Idriss told me all about Camille, and I worried that without someone to love, Eliott’s inspiration had tanked itself. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wasn’t in the mood for going out, but if Idriss and Sofiane were both going, I guess I was too. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Imane’s band was supposed to be playing, and I wanted to support them for her. Plus, I figured hearing some new music would be good for Eliott, take his mind off things a little bit. It had always worked in the past, so I figured this would be no different. 

We showed up a little late, which Imane chastised me for once I met up with her later, but all that showing up late meant was that we wouldn’t have to wait to see them perform. We also had to stand a little further back, but Eliott and I are pretty tall, and Sofiane wouldn’t have complained either way. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I forgot who was supposed to be playing, I was still trying to write music inside my head while we all waited for them to start. The whole place was decked out with glitter and confetti and big silver balloons. People were wearing sunglasses that said ‘1981’ and drinking like the world was going to end. I was somewhat inclined to join them, but the looks Idriss kept giving me convinced me otherwise. 

Soon enough, the band started playing, and I forgot everything else on my mind. 

They were incredible, way too good to be performing at a shitty LA bar. Each member stood out on their own, but they were so seamless together, it almost felt to me like they were a family. Still the lead singer captured me from the very first note he sang. 

I thought maybe he was a little drunk, he seemed a bit unsteady and the lead guitarist was looking at him funny, but he still performed wonderfully. His voice was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard, and I’d heard a lot of really great singers. Dated one of them, even. I was entranced.

His eyes met mine somehow, over the massive crowd, and he didn’t look away for the rest of their first song. His eyes were blue, so blue, like little oceans daring me to come and explore. I wanted to, more than anything. 

It felt like he was singing right to me, like he’d written the lyrics just for me, though I knew that wasn’t true.  _ That  _ was what I wanted to write songs like, though. I wanted to write something that could feel so universal, even if it was highly personal. 

He only broke eye contact when the last note of the song rang out, and he moved to the back of the stage, one of the girls in the group taking his place at the mic. I nearly booed, nearly yelled for her to leave and him to come back, but I didn’t, because I wasn’t insane. I watched him throughout that song too, but he never looked back at me, or anyone. The girl on guitar was watching him the whole time too, and that was when I assumed he was the songwriter of their group. The song was beautiful, I felt a million emotions bursting to the surface of my mind when I listened to it, and I saw that reflected in the boy onstage. I wanted to be the one he wrote that song was about, and with that realization came panic. 

I excused myself to the bathroom pretty quickly after that, thoughts racing a million miles a minute. Yes, I’d been blatantly staring at the lead singer, but so was everyone else, guy or girl, so I didn’t find that out of the ordinary. Maybe I wanted their second song to be about me because the other girl was singing it, and I was just confused. 

I’d never considered the possibility of being attracted to anyone other than a girl, but when I really thought about it, I didn’t care about gender at all, I just cared about the person. I didn’t know what to call that, if that meant I was gay or straight or something else I hadn’t heard of, so I panicked even more. 

Pansexual, now, is what I call it, and I’m proud to, but I wasn’t well versed enough in queer culture to come to a label that felt like it fit me just right for a long time. 

Still, it was scary at first. I knew what people said about guys who liked other guys, and even though I believed that everyone should be free to love who they wanted to love, I knew a lot of other people wouldn’t feel the same. Besides, what was I thinking, assuming the first guy I’d ever had feelings like this about would reciprocate those feelings in any way?

By the time Idriss found me in the bathroom, the band’s set was long over and he’d said hello to his sister and everything. I was looking forward to meeting her, finally, but I hadn’t been expecting to have a panic attack over the lead singer of a local band’s blue eyes. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I was worried, momentarily, that Eliott was high or something, because he looked panicked out of his mind. I didn’t know what had happened between when he went to the bathroom and when I found him, but I had to make sure it wasn’t serious enough to require intervention.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I’d worked with kids a lot back in college, so when Idriss came to find me and told me Eliott was freaking out and wouldn’t stop, I assumed he was having a panic attack. I’d never had one, but the kids I worked with did on occasion, so I tried to help in any way I could. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Of all the fucked up things going on in my head, panic attacks weren’t usually one of them, so I didn’t know that was what was happening. I felt stupid afterwards, because of the cause of the panic attack, and I wouldn’t tell Idriss or Sofiane because I didn’t know how they’d react. I didn’t know if it meant that I was gay now, or what. 

Idriss was religious, but I knew fuck all about religion, even considering the few things I’d picked up over the years, so I didn’t want him to hate me for something that was out of my control. I thought a lot about it, and figured I couldn’t be gay, because I’d loved Camille in a way that was whole and all consuming, but I couldn’t be straight, because the boy on stage made me feel something I hadn’t ever felt before. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I talked him down the best I could, and after a few minutes he seemed to be getting much better, so the three of us decided to leave. Idriss seemed more worried than the situation called for, and I assured him that panic attacks were pretty common, but he still looked more worried than necessary.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I was worried about him getting back to the place he was in a few years prior, when he’d had his first episode. Neither of us knew it was an episode, before, so I didn’t pick up on any signs or anything and I associated it all with him using substances. Thankfully what he was going through on New Year’s wasn’t an episode, but an isolated incident.

**Eliott Demaury:**

If one good thing came out of that night, it was that I had inspiration again. All the words I’d been looking for for months suddenly appeared fully formed in my mind, melodies to match. Sofiane and I found a studio for me to record the demo in, it was a ramshackle little place, but it was cheap and there was a producer on hand to help me work through the music bits, since I didn’t play any instruments.

I’d written quite a few songs following New Year’s, my favorite of which I was too scared to record. I didn’t record it for a long time, actually, and I never released it traditionally, though I did sing it live a few times later in my career, because it would have outed me before I was ready. It’s still one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written, though.

“Sunshine Boy”, I called it, which is kind of ironic, because that’s what a lot of people in my life have called  _ me _ , but in my defense, I got that nickname long after I’d written this song. It was partially because of this song, actually, that I got the nickname. Most people just didn’t know the origin. 

It was about the boy with the blue eyes, because even up there on stage, his light shined brighter than anyone else in the room. 

But I couldn’t have my first song, one of three I would market to various record labels, be a love song about a boy. The world wasn’t quite that progressive yet. 

Instead, I made the songs more cryptic, and only one of three ended up being a proper love song anyhow. One of them was half a love song, half a spiral about my own thoughts and what was going on in my mind at any given opportunity. I wasn’t sure what I wanted my sound to be, probably because I didn’t know how to  _ make _ music, the same way a lot of people in the industry did, so I just kind of experimented with everything. 

_ (Eliott laughs) _

I kind of liked not having a single sound to call my own, I liked the freedom it afforded me. Still, we made the demo sound as cohesive as possible to be more appealing to record labels. The producer I worked with on those songs was great, not as great as my later producer, but he was really intuitive in the way he approached music and didn’t think less of me for not being as musically inclined as other people he worked with. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

The three songs we used for the demo were “Blue”, “Consume Me”, and “Double Trouble”. “Double Trouble” didn’t make it to the album, but it was a fun, simple song. He wrote about some of his experiences in the LA party scene, many experiences of which I was slightly appalled to learn about. Eliott had lived a million lives before I’d ever met him.

**Eliott Demaury:**

“Blue” was about love at first sight, about the blue eyed boy, but I kept pronouns out of it. Camille had blue eyes too, so if anyone asked I could say it was about her.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I nearly rolled my eyes when he wrote that song about Camille, but I didn’t, and I held my tongue. He didn’t need to be reminded of all the ways she sucked, and it was a great song anyhow.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Sometime around April, we heard back from a couple record labels. Eliott hadn’t expected to hear back from any, so he was out of his mind with excitement. I looked into each one of them a bit further, just to make sure we made the right choice in where he landed, and eventually we settled on Shame Records.

I didn’t know at the time that the band we’d seen on New Year's was also signed there, but I knew soon enough. I didn’t tell Eliott, because I didn’t know if something related to that band was what had freaked him out that night, and I didn’t want him to be uncomfortable. 

The producer assigned to him by Charles, the studio head, was Alexia Martineau, and right from the start I knew she and Eliott would get along well. 

**Alexia Martineau (producer,** **_Fifteen Minutes of Fame_ ** **,** **_Le Premier_ ** **,** **_Minute by Minute_ ** **,** **_Polaris_ ** **):**

Eliott was the most attractive person I’d ever seen in my life, and I worked with attractive people regularly. If I hadn’t had a crush on Lucas Lallemant from Seven Minutes in Heaven at the time, I would definitely have tried to go there. It’s probably good that I didn’t, though, because I’m not sure how that would have affected our working relationship.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Alexia Martineau is the coolest person I’ve ever known. She’s so unapologetically herself all the time, something I found really admirable. She had pink hair when I met her, and unicorn shoes.

**Alexia Martineau:**

Sofiane was hot too, and when I met Idriss? Whew. Hot people travel in packs, I swear.

**Eliott Demaury:**

The very first day I met her, Alexia casually mentioned being attracted to girls and boys, it was such a small moment in our conversation that I nearly missed it, but it told me that I wasn’t alone, that there were people like me out there in the world. People that could love who they loved openly, unafraid of what others might say. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

We didn’t start working on recording and producing his album seriously until I was done with _ Fifteen Minutes of Fame _ , but we talked a lot on the daily. He said he liked being around the studio while he was writing, and I was always at the studio, so we would have lunch often, or be the only two left at three in the morning.

I liked talking to Eliott a lot, we could always talk about things together that either one of us were too scared to talk about with other people. This started, I think, because he asked me one time about a comment I’d made, about being attracted to girls as well as boys. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I’d been working up the nerve to ask her about it for like three weeks. All the while I’d probably written five more songs about blue eyed boy but still refused to accept that I wasn’t straight. Heteronormativity is one hell of a drug, kids. Would not recommend it.

**Alexia Martineau:**

I knew well enough by then that he wasn’t asking because he had a problem with it, and he looked nervous enough that I had a feeling I knew where the conversation was going, so I approached it gently, but purposefully.

I told him that I was bisexual, and that I could be attracted to anyone of any gender, but that sometimes I was attracted to different genders in different ways, if that made any sense.

He told me that it did make sense, but he still looked puzzled, so I let him work through whatever was going on in his mind before adding more. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

What she said made sense to me, about bisexuality, and I started to think that maybe that’s what I was, bisexual. The difference between us was that, in my limited experience, I’d been attracted to multiple genders, but I hadn’t really noticed or felt any different sort of attraction based on the genders. 

I spilled all of this to her in one big blur, and she listened patiently, which was all I could have asked for her to do. 

She told me she wasn’t an expert on human sexuality by any means, but she thought maybe I was bisexual like her. Even then, it didn’t totally feel right to me, but I clung to any sort of label like a lifeline. 

I think I only referred to myself as bisexual for about a year, until I just decided to say that I preferred not to label my sexuality, and that it was fluid. Pansexuality wasn’t used colloquially in the sense it is nowadays for quite some time, so it took some time for me to find something that fit me just right, but it was worth the wait. There’s nothing wrong with finding comfort in the label of bisexuality, it just wasn’t right for me. The same way pansexuality isn’t the right label for Alexia.

Even from the beginning, our bi/pan solidarity was off the charts. I wouldn’t have had it any other way, and I definitely wouldn’t have found my self confidence without her help. Alex was my life coach, in some ways, even if that’s not what I was paying her for.

**Alexia Martineau:**

Eliott’s always joked that I was his unpaid life coach, which is pretty accurate. I mean, I was paid, technically, because I produced his music, but the unofficial life coaching hours were much longer than the music production hours, I assure you.

I’m what, two years older than him, and somehow he seemed to think that meant I had my life put together. In his defense, my life was a bit more put together than his, because I knew who I was, not just in terms of my sexuality, and he was still figuring it out. I’m not sure anyone ever asked him  _ who _ he was before I did, or ever challenged him to find an answer, even if it was hard to find. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I liked snakes, I wanted a pet snake, even though Idriss wouldn’t let me. My leather jacket was well worn because it made me look like what everyone thought I should be, but I preferred the big brown one I had in the back of my closet. I liked to draw, and I drew the people in my life as animals, for no logical reason at all. I was a raccoon, Idriss was a fox, and so on. 

I was a lot of different things, and Alexia showed me that I didn’t have to sacrifice any of them to be me. In fact, I should have been embracing them. It was easier said than done, but I did, bit by bit.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Eliott with confidence made the Eliott I’d known for six years look like a little bitch. 

_ (Idriss laughs) _

I’m sorry, that sounded bad, but I kind of mean it. Eliott with confidence was a force to be reckoned with, even though he was still the same somewhat shy, sweet boy, once you got past his intimidating demeanor. And he was intimidating, for sure. I blame that on his attractiveness, but I don’t think the attractiveness came out in full force until he found some self confidence, so they really went hand in hand. 

The only problem with the newfound confidence was that I wasn’t able to tell when it slipped into overconfidence, the type of which I’d only ever seen him wear once before. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I had my next big manic episode just as summer was in full force. I was set to start working on my album now that I’d had most of the lyrics to the songs written and Alexia was done producing the other project she’d been working on, but suddenly my brain wouldn’t rest. 

I’ve been told that I was lucky to have such a long gap between major manic episodes back before I knew what I was experiencing, though I can’t be sure that there wasn’t anything in between, a hypomanic episode that I don’t remember the details of and other people just passed off as me being more lively than usual. I was a pretty ‘sunshiney’ person in general, so a small change would have gone unnoticed until people knew what to look for.

I wrote about thirty songs over the weekend right before I was set to start recording and Alexia was pissed when I came in, because I wouldn’t see reason when she told me I couldn’t record them all. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I’d never seen Eliott angry or upset, and this version of angry didn’t seem like him at all. I wondered if he was maybe under some sort of influence, because it wouldn’t have been the first time I’d seen it from someone, and I was in no position to do or say anything about it, but if it was going to impact our work something had to be done. I sent him home and told Sofiane what was going on, asked if he’d ever acted like this before. Sofiane said no, but told me he’d check up on Eliott to make sure everything was all right.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Idriss hadn’t divulged Eliott’s history with drugs to me, so that wasn’t even on my mind when Alexia talked to me. The only thing that I could think of was that maybe he was having another panic attack, because that was the only irregular behavior I’d experienced with him and I knew those usually weren’t a one time thing.

Idriss was out of town shooting a film abroad, so I couldn’t ask him anything either. Maybe if I could’ve we would have been able to help before the situation became dire.

It was clear to me right away that it wasn’t a panic attack, though. He was in a very different state of mind than I’d ever seen him in, almost like had ten cups of coffee and hadn’t slept in weeks. Though, for all I knew, all of that was true.

He kept telling me that we had to go to the bar Under the Sun, because the love of his life was there and he wouldn’t let whoever it was slip away again. Idriss had told me all about Camille, so I assumed he was talking about her, and I did everything I could to keep him away from the bar. 

Everything I could do wasn’t enough, though, because he slipped away when I went to the bathroom. Thankfully, I had an idea of where he was going, so I wasn’t too far behind. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I don’t remember much of that time, if I’m being honest, just bits and pieces mostly stitched together from what others have told me. I wasn’t being rational, but I never was, never really  _ am _ , during manic periods. It varies per episode, and per person, but that’s just my experience. 

I do know that I went looking for the blue eyed boy at the bar. He wasn’t there obviously, and I don’t know what would have happened if he was, but I guess I’ll never know. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

He wasn’t hard to find in a crowd, thankfully.

**Mika Dolleron (owner, Under the Sun):**

I remembered seeing him at the bar once before, no one could forget that face. I think I flirted with him a bit, and he flirted back, but then he started going on and on about some boy he was in love with. 

Now, I’ve always been as out and proud as I possibly could be, but I was still wary, cautious. The eighties weren’t the most forgiving times, in terms of sexuality, though there had certainly been some strides in the right direction. I tried to get him to keep his voice down, because some people were looking at him funny, but he wouldn’t listen to me. 

I cut him off, wondering if he’d maybe had too much to drink before he got there, but he didn’t appear drunk in all the usual senses. And trust me, I can spot someone under the influence of alcohol from a mile away. 

After a while he either got bored of me or found the boy he was looking for, because he disappeared, and minutes later another attractive young man took his place. Sofiane. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I saw him talking to Mika, but by the time I made my way through the crowd to the bar, he was gone again. Mika seemed worried too, about what, he wouldn’t say. He told me that Eliott needed to be careful, talking like he was, and that he was lucky he hadn’t been speaking to the wrong people. I had no idea what he was talking about, but it worried me even more. 

It wasn’t hard to find Eliott again after that, because he was on stage. Thankfully he didn’t interrupt another band or singer, but his mind was clearly running so fast that he could barely stand still enough to sing a song. Everyone in the bar looked confused, and Mika tried to get him off stage, but he wouldn’t listen. He said that he was going to sing every song he’d ever written because they were the best songs ever written and Alexia didn’t believe in him. 

There were lots of whispers, at that point, and it didn’t help that he already had a reputation in the city, a lot of people knew exactly who he was. I’m sure they’d heard a lot of things that weren’t true as well, and took that night as some sort of confirmation about the worst things they’d heard. 

The night could have gone so much better, but it also could have ended much worse. We ended up in the hospital, because he’d tripped and fallen from the stage, breaking his wrist in the process. Of all the things we could have ended up in the hospital for, at least this was one of the more simple fixes. 

They asked me a lot of questions, particularly about Eliott’s mental state, but I didn’t have the answers, and I didn’t know why they were asking. Eventually I had to leave, because I wasn’t family, and they said they wanted him to stay overnight. I didn’t think a broken wrist needed that much time to take care of, but I left anyway. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I think they sedated me, or something, and when I woke up the next morning it was like the air had been sucked from my lungs entirely, the comedown hitting me from out of nowhere. They took me up for a psych evaluation, and I’m honestly surprised they ended up getting somewhere because it felt like my brain was moving in slow motion. 

They told me they wanted to admit me for an observational period, and I was too out of it to say no.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

When I came back the next morning, he was gone, and no one would tell me what happened. Finally I ran into the doctor that had checked him in the night before, and she told me that he’d been admitted into psych care for the next week at the very least.

I called Idriss immediately when I got home, because I didn’t know what that meant or what I could do about it.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

My first thought was that he was using again, but they wouldn’t have admitted him there for drug use, and my second thought was that maybe I’d been wrong all along, and there was something going on I hadn’t noticed. I thought about how I’d found him at the Star Hotel years back, and he’d barely been able to get up to go to the bathroom.

My job was important to me, more than most anything, but my family was always the most important, and Eliott was my family. And he needed me, so I didn’t care what that meant for the project I was working on. 

I got lucky with that director, and they suspended production for my family emergency, but that was a very close thing. If we hadn’t been so far into filming, I don’t think they would have waited for me. That role was the one that won me my first Oscar, it’s crazy to think I might have tanked my career by leaving in some other life. 

I pretended that Eliott was my brother in law at the hospital, and thankfully they didn’t look too far into it, so I was able to get some information.

**Eliott Demaury:**

A few days after I was there, they diagnosed me with manic-depressive disorder. That’s what they called it then, changing the diagnosis to bipolar later. I was confused, and they weren’t very helpful at first in terms of information, but they gave me some books and pamphlets to read, because I had nothing else to do, and things started to make sense bit by bit. 

I wasn’t sure if it was because they’d put me on medication or what, but that depression wasn’t as bad or long lasting as the one following my first manic episode. I felt more like myself again a bit quicker, and once I did, I wanted to leave. 

I was ashamed I’d let this all happen, even though I couldn’t have helped it. I felt like I was broken beyond repair, and that I didn’t want anyone to have to bear the burden of fixing me.

It took me a long time to see that this was just a part of me, as much as the color of my eyes or how tall I was. It wasn’t something I could change, and it wasn’t something that needed to be fixed. I still have my days, and the people in my life can vouch for that, but I’ve done my best over the years to make sure people aren’t as lost as I was when dealing with their mental health.

They let me leave after a week, with some medication, more pamphlets, and instruction on how to manage the mania and depression so neither one got to the point they had been before. 

I wasn’t expecting Idriss to be there waiting for me when I got out. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

It was so good to see Eliott, I don’t think I’ve ever been more relieved to see someone in my life. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

He had so many questions, and I knew I’d have to answer them, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to live in a world where nothing had changed for just a moment longer. 

But then I caught view of my wrist brace in my periphery, and I realized there would be no pretending. Everything had changed, it was only a matter of adjustment. Funny how a broken wrist seemed like the least of my problems now.

But Idriss, he didn’t ask any of the questions he surely had. He just looked me up and down once, like he didn’t believe it was actually me, and hugged me so tightly I didn’t think he’d ever let go. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I hadn’t been there for him when he needed me, and I’ll never forgive myself for that. The only solace I took was in the fact that he wasn’t entirely alone, he had Sofiane and Alexia.

**Eliott Demaury:**

My heart was a heavy one, though it was numb as well. It took me a long time to adjust to the medication I’d been given, because sometimes I felt like it was stifling me, subduing me to a person I didn’t want to be.

I know that, for the most part, it was more helpful than I ever wanted to give it credit for, but allow me some leeway in how I speak of my experience with mental illness. I was young and dumb for longer than I should have been, and the culture surrounding mental illness was much more stigmatized than it is now, even if there’s still a long way to go. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I gave him until we got home, then we sat down in the living room, I asked him questions, and he answered them. I thought there would have been more pushback, but he was surprisingly willing to answer the questions I had. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I knew I didn’t have a choice, that his asking was just a formality. Still, he was kind through it all. He could have kicked me out again, or called me crazy, but he didn’t. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I didn’t know what ‘manic-depressive’ meant, though it made sense when he explained it. I wasn’t sure what would have to change, given the diagnosis, but he told me that, as long as he took the medication prescribed to him, everything would be normal. I didn’t know well enough whether to argue with that or not, so I took his words at face value. 

There was more, though, on my end, that I had to share, and I didn’t want to at all. He didn’t look like he was fully back to being himself, and I didn’t want to bring him down more than necessary, but I also didn’t want him to hear anything from anyone else, so I knew I’d have to be the one to say something. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

He told me what people were saying about me. I knew he didn’t want to be the one to say so, but I appreciated him being honest with me, not treating me like I was fragile given everything that had happened. 

Still, the news stung. I hadn’t expected it all to go unnoticed… but it would have been nice if it had. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I’d do anything for Eliott, I really would, but I wasn’t trained in PR. I didn’t know the right or wrong things to say, so I didn’t say anything at all, which was also the wrong thing to do. Charles from Shame wouldn’t stop calling me, and I knew I’d have to pick up eventually, but I wanted to do that when I knew what was going on with Eliott, not before. 

**Charles Munier (studio head, Shame Records):**

I was just working in the best interest of the record label. We’d made a lot of risky moves recently in terms of who we’d signed and what we expected from them. Eliott Demaury was a wild card, one I wasn’t sure I wanted in my deck just yet.

**Eliott Demaury:**

We went in for a meeting with Charles, Sofiane and I. Idriss wanted to come with us too, but since we weren’t associated in a business sense, he couldn’t. Plus, he had his own life to get back to. 

I just want to put out there that I’ve never liked Charles, even before he didn’t like me. He was one of those people who’d grown up with everything handed to him and didn’t appreciate any of it. In a lot of ways, he was a reflection of me, of who I could have become. I’m sure we were more similar in upbringing than I ever was with some of the people I’m closest to, but he never wanted to be anything more than a rich man’s son, and I’d always wanted more, never knowing where that might lead me.

**Charles Munier:**

I knew who Eliott’s parents were, everyone did, so I thought we’d be more similar than we were. My life would have been much easier if we were. Instead, he was impulsive, led with his heart rather than reason, always saw the best in people and situations even when it bit him in the ass, and had too much to say.

In short: he was a PR nightmare, and I didn’t want to have to handle that. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Charles said that Eliott was contractually bound to one album with Shame, but after that they would be dropping him. He was more trouble than he was worth, Charles said.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I asked him how he knew what I was worth. I highly doubted he’d been the one to listen to my demo, and even if he had, three songs couldn’t showcase everything I was capable of.

He said that it didn’t matter, in the end, if I was worth it or not. I’d never be successful with Shame, and I should just get this album over with and move on. He said it like he was certain I would fail, and that my name would only be a blip in the grand scheme of music, life, and the rest. 

_ (Eliott shrugs) _

He could have been right, and if he hadn’t said so, maybe he would have been. But I was determined to prove him wrong. To be successful in my own right and rub it in his smug face.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t accomplish that with my first album. Alexia was my producer still, but Charles had final say on everything. If he liked a song too much, it had to go. Anything that reeked of success was to be squashed to a pulp, or repurposed for someone else to use without my permission. It felt like what had happened with Camille all over again, and I nearly led myself into a spiral because of it.

I started keeping my best work to myself, maybe sharing them with Alexia, but that was it. Charles is the reason I called my album what I did, I kind of meant it as a ‘fuck you’ of sorts. 

_ Le Premier _ , it meant ‘the first’ in French, because yes, this was my first album, but it wouldn’t be my last. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I’d always respected Charles, to a point, but when I started working with Eliott seriously, after his incident, I resented him more than anything, and that feeling only grew over the years. It appalled me that he sought to stifle one of his best and brightest artists because of his image in the media. The media would have moved on by the time he released his album, and they did. Things had staying power in the City of Angels, but Eliott’s work spoke for itself. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

When Idriss came back for good, he invited me out to take my mind off things. Part of me wanted to go, because I’d been mostly confined to the studio or our apartment since I’d returned from the hospital, but a bigger, envious part of me, knew that it would only make me upset, to see other people doing what I couldn’t. I didn’t miss the party lifestyle so much anymore, but I was feeling down enough at that moment that I knew it wouldn’t have been good for me to be in that atmosphere. 

I went to the studio with Alexia instead, because even if I hated the work I was doing there, at least she was good company. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

It was awful to see Eliott so defeated. He’d had so many ideas, been so excited for where music could take him, but it felt like his light was extinguished. I didn’t know if there was anything I could do to bring it back.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wasn’t technically supposed to smoke weed or drink with my medication, and I probably should have stayed away in general, given events of my teenage years, but Alexia rolled us a joint when I got to the studio, and I wasn’t in any mood to say no. It was better than the things I probably would have ended up doing had I gone out with Idriss.

**Alexia Martineau:**

I’d had time to sit with the songs he’d written while he was manic, and a lot of them were really beautiful, so I asked him about them, trying to ignite some of that passion he poured into his words. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I told her it didn’t matter, that Charles would cut anything I liked off at the source, determined to see me fail. Besides, I wasn’t the person who’d written those songs. I told her that the person who’d written them was crazy, out of his mind.

She told me to shut up, and Alexia was hardly one to raise her voice or be mad, but I could hear anger in her voice when she said it. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I knew he was in a rough place, and I knew that there would be ups and downs, but I couldn’t stand to hear him talk about himself like that. People like Charles didn’t deserve to win. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

She told me that people like Charles didn’t deserve to win, and I told her that I might have been a person like Charles, had some things in my life gone differently, but she refused to entertain that notion for even a minute. People like Charles had everything, she said, except the things that made us human. He had no passion, no love, nothing to work for, no reason he did what he did. 

I argued with her that I didn’t have any love either, because the way I’d been burned in the past with Camille had rendered my heart unavailable to all others until the end of time, and she just laughed at me. Told me the boy I’d written thirty songs about begged to differ.

I felt stupid having to admit to her that I’d only ever seen him once, from afar. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I’d been there through Eliott’s entire sexuality crisis, but he’d never described the boy who’d triggered it in any amount of detail, so for all I knew he could have been talking about John fucking Travolta.

He wasn’t, though, that became clear very quickly. In fact, I had an inkling that I might have known who he was talking about, even if that sounded a bit crazy. I wasn’t positive, so I never shared my suspicions, but a part of me always hoped they were right. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I realized how stupid my crush was while I was talking to Alexia, but I also realized it was things like this that meant too much to me to let go of entirely, both in life and music. I started to have an idea, a terrible idea, but before I could voice it, Alexia voiced a terrible idea of her own, and I liked hers better.

**Alexia Martineau:**

I suggested we record the songs he wanted to record anyway. He had enough recordings of the songs he wasn’t so keen on to placate Charles should he come asking, but Charles was never involved in the final processes of making the records and knowing what all was on them. He wouldn’t have to know until it was too late. And even if he cancelled reproduction of the records, at least Eliott got to say what he wanted to say. 

Eliott was looking at me with eyes so wide I worried he’d turn me down or run and tell Charles I’d even suggested such a thing, but there was a light in them I hadn’t seen in a while, and I knew he was sold. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I’d rather have ten people listen to an album that I was really proud of than have a million listen to one that wasn’t  _ me _ . So, that’s what we did. 

There were a lot of songs to sift through, and some of them were actually better than I’d thought they would be. They weren’t all about the blue eyed boy, of course, there were some about me too, how trapped I felt inside myself. 

“My Body is a Cage” was the most ‘rock’ alternative my music ever got, but that song meant a lot to me. Well… maybe “Humongous” was pretty rock too, but that was mostly thanks to the production. 

The studio provided me with a band to work on my project with, and I’m sure they would have toured with me if I’d  _ had _ a tour, but everyone knew that was never going to happen. They were all cool, they were a lot of fun to work with, actually, but none of us stayed in touch after  _ Le Premier _ .

**Alexia Martineau:**

As the producer, I said that I needed full creative control over certain aspects right from the beginning, before Charles intervened and all, so I chose the band members. There was Shay Dixon, our percussionist, Edoardo Incanti on guitar, Mia Winter on keys, Esra Aydin on bass, and Sander Driesen on backing vocals. Esra was from the Netherlands, and I’m pretty sure she joined a band with some other girls she knew from back there after Eliott’s album, and the rest of them found their own places in the music industry, which were well deserved. They were all far more talented than anyone at Shame gave them credit for. 

Any extra instrumentation we needed I either called local contacts I knew into the studio or I manufactured them myself. Let me tell you, it was much harder to do that back then than it is now. Now, I can go into Garageband now and add a trumpet for shits and giggles by pressing a few keys on my laptop keyboard. Oh, how the times change.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I liked working with the makeshift band. I knew that I was a solo artist, and that they’d be done with me after this project, but I found myself wanting to have a more collaborative career on the whole. Yes, I liked writing and singing my own songs, but they wouldn’t have sounded the way they did without everyone else, and the things they had to do far surpassed writing down a few words and singing along to whatever melody was created for me. 

It made me want to learn an instrument, to be able to do more things  _ with  _ the band, but I guess I just never found the time.

_ (Eliott laughs) _

I mean, there was like, a week during which I tried to get Edoardo to teach me to play the guitar, but it was far more complicated than I’d been expecting, so I gave up. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

Eliott did us all a favor when he stopped trying to learn to play the guitar. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Eliott told me what he and Alexia were planning on doing, probably because he wanted me to know how much trouble to be on the lookout for when they pulled the stunt that they planned on pulling, so I appreciated the heads up. I also didn’t tell him not to do it, because even though I do prefer to do things more by the book, in many senses, I could tell that what Charles was doing, the way he was managing Eliott’s creativity in a way that blocked it entirely, wouldn’t end well for anyone.

So, I just shut up and let it all unfold from the sidelines, waiting to clean up any messes that came my way. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

There was one session Eliott had at the studio once I got back from filming for real, and it was like a lightbulb switched in high brain after it. He was starting to be the Eliott I knew again, and I was so happy to see he was getting back on track mentally and in his career. 

For all intents and purposes, he’s my little brother, and I always wanted to see him happy more than anything.

I invited him to come to the album release party for the band my sister managed, because I wanted them to meet like they hadn’t been able to do on New Year’s, but he was so into his work I don’t think I could have pulled him away with a million dollar bill. Since Charles would be busy away from the studio that night, he thought it was the perfect time to get some work done. Alexia was going to be at the release party too, but he said Sofiane could stand in for her well enough while they were just recording a couple options for some of the songs. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I sent one of the other producers I trusted to oversee the proceedings with Sofiane, just in case. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

That night was all about experimentation. I had a pretty good handle on all the songs I wanted to record, and what they all meant to me, but we had to figure out what they should sound like. We had basic melodies or ideas in place for most of the songs, but I figured that if this was the only album I’d get to make, at least with Shame, I wanted each song to sound different, that way I couldn’t say there were things I hadn’t tried.

_ Le Premier _ probably wasn’t the most cohesive body of work, songs ranging from pop to alternative to indie to rock and back again, but that’s why I ended up loving it. It was me.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I think “Blue” was the first song he completed fully, and he played it for me that one night he was in the studio, with the rest of the band assigned to him, and I swear his smile was so big it could have split mountains. I mean, Eliott’s smiles were always big, but I’ve always loved that song so much because of the pride Eliott wore so plainly when he played it for me for the first time.

It had come a long way from the demo we’d first recorded, and I loved how Eliott’s sound was expanding under Alexia’s influence. I hoped it would be enough to make the label rethink their decisions about his future. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I didn’t necessarily need Sofiane’s approval, but it was nice to have it. He wasn’t usually super involved in the music making process, so I was glad to have him there for the night to see what all went down in the studio day after day. 

It’s his fault, probably that I made “Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful”. We messed around a lot that night, and the production on the song was pretty fun, but the lyrics— who allowed me to sing them, who thought that was a good idea? I pretty much wrote them on the spot, and they were written very tongue in cheek. I’m not sure if it came across that way, but that was the intention.

I should just come right out and say, yes, I wrote the song about myself, no, it wasn’t supposed to be serious.

It was a little bit about Charles in some parts too. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Watching Eliott and the group make Quad B, it was really fun. Eliott seemed to be having a great time, and he didn’t care that the lyrics he was singing were shallow or narcissistic, because he treated it all like one big joke. One big joke that ended up going platinum, who would have thought.

**Eliott Demaury:**

We referred to the song as Quad B, because “Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful” was comically long and none of us could say it with a straight face. I could hardly ever sing any of it with a straight face.

It was such a stupid, stupid song, I relaly need you to know this. I legitimately have no idea why it was so successful. The opening lyrics are ‘Looking sexy’ for Christ’s sake. I rhymed my last name with pretty. Who the fuck does that? 

Sofiane, actually, is the one recorded saying ‘beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,’ on the record. I’m not sure if anyone ever noticed it wasn’t me, but it wasn’t. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

To say I was surprised, coming into the studio the next day hearing they’d recorded an entirely new song to completion, would be an understatement. I never expected to hear Quad B on the tape they played back for me, but it was immediately my favorite of his songs. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I told Alex we’d just been joking around, and that we should scrap that one, or at least rewrite the lyrics. I didn’t want people to think I was crazier than they already thought I was.

She refused to even entertain the idea. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I don’t know how he did it, but somehow he’d made a song out of a joke, and it ended up being  _ everything _ . The lyrics were nowhere near the poetic caliber of his other songs, but that was what made it so good. People who saw Eliott, and then listened to his record, were never going to believe he was an insecure guy waiting for a love the other person might not return, like some of his other songs suggested. They needed a song that showed Eliott the way they saw him, as this hot, unattainable, celebrity. They needed to hear this confidence, joke or not. I was sure most people would be smart enough to realize the song was written ironically, which only made it more charming.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wrote songs like poetry, I tried to evoke feeling with my words, always reaching toward depth. Quad B was a surface level song, but Alexia argued with me that it was great  _ because _ it was a surface level song. I’m still not sure. 

I wrote “Sign of the Times” to counteract any damage Quad B might cause, and to reassert that I was actually a serious musician, not some child of Hollywood royalty taking the piss at a career that had been handed to me. Because it hadn’t been handed to me. In fact, it was being actively taken from me, but no one would ever know that until now. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

We’ve all heard “Sign of the Times”, we all know how incredible it was. He put it on the album directly after Quad B, as the closer, I think to remind people that he had the capacity to do anything he wanted to do with his music. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I thought it was the perfect closing song for  _ Le Premier _ , even though we didn’t have all the other songs ordered yet. Honestly, ordering the songs on my album was way more fun than I think it was meant to be, especially because they were all so different. 

I would say my album was split into two sections, by the time I was done with it, though. The first section, containing the first three songs, was about me, my mental illness, my place in the world. I didn’t know who I was, really, but I was trying to figure it out, and those three songs were the ones I used to do it. Then there was “Affluenza”, which didn’t really fit into a section of it’s own, but kind of tied in with Quad B. “Affluenza” was my fuck you to Charles, because it was about people like him, who thought that money was the only thing worth something in this world. I’m sure some people thought it was hypocritical of me to critique that side of society, seeing as I’d grown up a part of it, but growing up inside the belly of the beast is what made me able to see its faults so plainly, I believe. 

The second section, from “Blue” to “Best Friend” was all about love. I know right now you’re thinking of not so long ago when I said I was done with love, but come on. It’s me we’re talking about. None of those songs were about Camille, but I let people pretend they were. It was easier than saying they were about the idea of a person I’d only ever seen once, from afar. That would have sounded crazy. 

Technically, “Consume Me” was in the middle there, but I still couldn’t decide of that was a love song or not. I still can’t, and neither can most of the people I’ve asked about it. 

Quad B and “Sign of the Times” rounded out the eleven songs, neither of them fitting into one of the two sections, but neither one of them, thankfully, seeming out of place. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

Now that I was fully done with the other album I’d been working on, I could focus all my attention on Eliott, and everything went very quickly after that. Charles checked in randomly, and we had some demos of the songs Charles had wanted Eliott to sing on hand just in case he wanted to hear our work. I knew there was a possibility I’d get into trouble for this, but they needed me more than I needed them at that point. The other record I’d produced was flying off the shelves, and people wanted more where it came from.

Neither of us had much to lose, but we did have much to gain. 

**Charles Munier:**

If I’d have known the stunt they were pulling, I would have released Eliott immediately, contract be damned. We needed Alexia, because her work on Seven Minutes in Heaven’s album was achieving critical acclaim, and I doubted the group would produce more work for us without her, their manager had all but said so, so I couldn’t have punished her for it, even though I wanted to. 

The disrespect of it all— I was completely astounded. I didn’t even care about the music involved. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I found a photographer for Eliott’s cover shoot through Idriss, who knew him from some magazine shoot he’d done to promote one of his films. The album wasn’t fully done yet, but I didn’t want the cover to be the thing holding us back from releasing it. Charles had decided on a September release, which was fast approaching, so I called a photographer and told Eliott to do what he did best. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I didn’t know what Sofiane meant by ‘do what you do best’, but I assumed he was joking about how people, generally, thought I was attractive.

**Alexandre Delano (photographer):**

Eliott was not what I was expecting at all. People always say ‘if looks could kill’ as a joke of sorts but I genuinely think Eliott’s looks  _ could _ have killed, if he wanted them to. But no, he was a golden retriever puppy stuffed into the body of a fucking model.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Alex was super cool, he made me feel really comfortable during the shoot. I had no idea what I was doing, I’ve never been good at photoshoots and stuff, but he made me look good, so I guess that’s all I could have hoped for. 

**Alexandre Delano:**

Eliott was such a natural, like, I swear, was the guy just amazing at everything he tried, or was he just so hot he didn’t even have to try?

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

We just went for a simple album cover, because that was what both Eliott and I thought would be best, considering his body of work. He wanted the music to speak for itself, and I knew that his face would sell despite Charles’ best efforts on the contrary.

**Alexandre Delano:**

I knew the perfect shot right when I took it. Usually, I don’t assert my opinion too much, because at the end of the day my job is just to take the photos, but if they hadn’t used that picture I would have been extremely disappointed.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Alex had a keen eye, so I wanted him to be involved in the editing of the cover as well, and it was good that I did. He was the one who had the idea to desaturate everything but the bandana Eliott was wearing around his neck and his eye. They were both a very similar shade of blue, though I did ask Alex to enhance both. It would tie in with his song, and I felt blue was the right color to use in defining that album. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

They made me look way better than I actually did. I really liked what they did with the blue, though, that was a nice touch.

**Alexia Martineau:**

‘Holy lord have mercy’ was the thought running through my mind when I saw the finalized album cover, and I’m certain I’m not the only one. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

The back of the album was just a black and white photo of a studio microphone with the tracklist off to the side in blue, but I thought that was perfect. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

By the time they were done with all of that, Eliott and I were practically done with the actual music, and it was a fucking amazing album. My personal favorite song was “F*** it I Love You”, because I feel like that one got to the heart of who Eliott was at that time in history. It was every bit as dreamy and romantic as he was. Plus his vocals on that one… it sounded like a lullaby, in a sense, or the whisperings of some deity. 

The record we played for Charles, on the other hand, was shit. Not that Eliott was ever shit at what he did, but we cut together some bad takes, fucked up the production, and labelled a bunch of the songs under different names so he wouldn’t be suspicious. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

What Alexia and I did was sneaky as hell, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

The release day came and passed without fanfare. There was no party, no acknowledgment of any kind really, but that was what we’d expected. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I bought a couple copies of the record, because it was still crazy to me that it was real, that I could hold it in my hands, pop it on my record player, and hear the music that had been trapped inside my mind longer than I even knew. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

We bumped the hell out of that album, day and night. I was really proud of him, and I could tell he was proud of himself. I sent a couple copies to my sister, because I thought she’d like it. She had the best ear for music of anyone I knew. 

**Charles Munier:**

It wasn’t until about a month later that I realized what they’d done. I’d had no reason to listen to the record, and we weren’t pushing people to sell it, buy it, or play it on the radio, so I figured it was all over and done for, and I could wash my hands of Eliott Demaury.

But then we got a request for more records at a bunch of the biggest record stores around the country, and I heard his voice on the radio singing a song I’d never heard before.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

_ Le Premier _ wasn’t a monumental success or anything, but it did better than any of us would have expected. Quad B was on the radio, much to Eliott’s chagrin, and he’d started to pick up a small but loyal following. People wanted more, and they wanted him to tour, but only we knew those things might never happen.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I started signing up for open mics around the city at different places, just to get a chance to perform those songs live. It was crazy, the first time I realized people were singing along with me. 

The pseudo shows went from small, scattered crowds to much larger and more tightly packed. I wasn’t quite living the rockstar lifestyle, but it was enough for me at the time to be doing anything at all.

The day Charles found out was very clear, because he rang our place about twenty times before I finally picked up. 

**Charles Munier:**

On one hand, I was livid, but on the other, they were making the label a fair bit of money, and I wasn’t just going to stop that from happening because Eliott Demaury was a pain in my ass. Once I got some semblance of a plan, of where to go from there, I asked Eliott and Sofiane to come in for a meeting to discuss his future with Shame.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I don’t know why Charles’ plan never crossed my mind. I kicked myself for not thinking of a way to combat it.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Technically, the first contract I’d signed with them tied me to them for five years, but only required the release of one album. This meant that I couldn’t leave, even if I wanted to. And, to make matters worse, Charles said that any songs I wrote while represented by Shame were up for any of the artists at the label to use, and I wasn’t allowed to record any of them on my own. 

I wouldn’t have minded writing for other people at some point, but not when my own career was just taking off. And not when I didn’t have any say in the matter. 

**Charles Munier:**

They didn’t get to win.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Eliott was really defeated after that, I could see it in the way he held himself. I wanted to assure him I’d be able to fix it, but I didn’t know if that was true. The best assurance I could offer was that I’d find any and every loophole and we’d figure out where to go from there. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I didn’t want Sof to think I was upset with him, or that he failed me in any way, because he hadn’t. I’d only failed myself, my stupid fucking brain keeping me from the life and career I longed for. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

When Sofiane told me about what happened, I had the beginnings of an idea. Not enough to excite anyone just yet, but enough to get the gears in my mind turning.

**Eliott Demaury:**

The holidays came before I knew it, and soon it would be a new year. My album was still selling relatively well, and I did some more performances, but it was hard not to be discouraged, worried each one could be the last. I didn’t want to go to the Shame Records holiday party at Under the Sun, but Idriss said his sister would be there and he wanted the two of us to finally meet, so I went. 

I think I wore a black turtleneck under a sportcoat with cropped black pants and black boots. Not a bad ensemble, and I was sure it would be wasted on people that I didn’t like and didn’t like me. At least I had allies in Idriss, Sofiane, and Alexia. My hair was pretty long at that point too, but its gravity defying nature made it look ok.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I was really excited for Eliott and Imane to meet, because she was a big part of the plan that had been ruminating in my mind. Also because I loved them both, and felt it was finally time to merge these two parts of my world.

**Imane Bakhellal (manager, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I’d heard a lot about Eliott, not only from Idriss, but also from word of mouth. Alexia was one of the trusted sources, but the media was another case. I knew vague details of something that had happened at Under the Sun one night, mostly from Mika. Everyone said that he was crazy, but that wasn’t the impression I got when we met officially.

He was far more shy than I expected him to be, but he was sweet, one of the sweetest people I’ve ever known. Sofiane is probably the only one that comes out ahead of him in that category. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I don’t know why I didn’t put two and two together and realize that Imane was the manager to the stars that everyone at Shame was always talking about. She was the manager of the breakout band of the year, a band I quickly realized I’d heard of before. Not just heard of, but  _ heard. _ Live. In that very same bar. 

I tried not to freak out about what that implied.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I’d listened to the record when Idriss sent it to me, and I intended to share them with the heathens I managed, because I thought they would all really enjoy Eliott’s music and his experimentations across different genres. I hadn’t gotten around to it yet, but it was next on my list after the holidays. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Idriss told me about his idea, and I was jealous I hadn’t thought of it. Imane was beautiful and intimidating, but I knew that I had to be the one to broach the topic, so it wouldn’t just look like Idriss meddling. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I saw right through both Sofiane and Idriss, but I didn’t call them out because if they hadn’t suggested what they did, I would have suggested it. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Now, I was full on panicking at that point, because it was very likely that the boy who’d only lived in my dreams for nearly a year was in the same room I was in, and it was likely we’d cross paths at some point. I knew that there was only a slim chance he’d be into guys at all, even less that he’d be into  _ me _ , but I had to try.

Granted, it took me about an hour in the bathroom to work up the nerve to try, but I tried to channel Quad B Eliott, the one who was hot and confident and knew it. 

It was easier said than done.

I decided to go to the bar and get myself a drink to calm myself a bit, and lo and behold. I really hadn’t meant to run into him like that, but there he was, chatting with the bartender, looking every bit as beautiful as I remembered. When he turned those blue eyes to meet mine, I knew with utter certainty that I was a goner. 

He was wearing a dumb outfit, a white t shirt and jeans with a sportcoat thrown over it, and his hair was an untameable mess, and I thought no one had ever looked that beautiful before. 

I realized too late that we were both just staring at each other, so in an effort to make it seem like I hadn’t been staring, I asked him why  _ he  _ had been staring. He blushed and stammered out some unintelligible response and my heart just about burst. I never had a ‘gaydar’ or anything like that, but when I started talking to him as casually as I could and he didn’t do much more than mumble responses in a daze and stare so deeply into my soul I thought I might combust, I had a feeling he might have been at least a little bit into me. 

I asked him to show me where the bathrooms were, though I obviously knew. I figured we could get to know each other a little bit better behind closed doors than in the middle of everyone. 

_ (Eliott blushes) _

That came out wrong. My intention really was just to talk or something, I swear.

But then…

But then we got to the bathroom, he said, “Welcome to pee town!” and it was so fucking stupid and endearing for some reason that I couldn’t hold myself back. I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted anyone in my life. 

He didn’t kiss me back, and I let him go immediately, chiding myself for being the crazy Eliott Demaury everyone already thought I was. I felt horrible, almost like I was going to cry. Not because he’d rejected me, but because I’d kissed him without asking, without making sure he was feeling the same thing I was.

Suddenly, though I was being pulled, pulled into the deepest depths of the ocean, based on all the shades of blue lighting up in his eyes as he held me so close there was barely a breath between us. 

He said, “Kiss me again. Kiss me all night.”

And, well, what was I supposed to do other than oblige him? 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Eliott was acting weird when we left the party, but I let it slide because I was probably acting weird too. Sofiane and I’s plan had been a success, after all, and Eliott was going to have a future in music, one that I hoped he wouldn’t be too upset about.

**Eliott Demaury:**

December turned to January in one big blur, a blur consumed by thoughts of kisses shared in the bathroom at a bar with a boy whose name I still didn’t know. I was still so out of it from everything that happened with me and blue eyed boy that when Sofiane told me we needed to meet to discuss my future, I thought nothing of it. As long as I was with Shame long enough to see the boy again, even once, I’d be satisfied.

Then Imane was with him, and I did start to get a bit curious.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

We waited until after the new year to broach the topic, because Imane said her band wouldn’t start working on their second album until after the new year. Plus, Eliott deserved some time off to himself. He’d been working nonstop for practically the entire year beforehand, other than a few minor bumps in the road. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I hated having time off, so I was glad when Sofiane called, even if Imane’s presence did make me question what I was doing there. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

It was great that Seven Minutes in Heaven wanted to get going on their next album right away, but they needed some more buzz, they couldn’t just coast off  _ Fifteen Minutes of Fame _ into their next album with nothing in between. 

That was where Eliott came in.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Imane and Sofiane told me they wanted me to write and record a song with the group, something they could release before they got to work on their next album, to drum up more excitement. She said our sounds would work really well together, and this would be a big step for both of our careers. Sofiane added that this was a loophole in Charles’ way of thinking. Technically if I did this, I wouldn’t be writing and recording a song for  _ myself _ , but I’d still get to reap the benefits.

Imane told me Lucas wrote all of their songs, though Daphné had been asking to write at least one for the second album. In any case, she said that for this song I’d be co writing with Lucas, and it might be tough because he wasn’t one to relinquish control easily. I didn’t know who was who in the band, I’d been too preoccupied with my own shit while they’d been touring and releasing theirs, but I had a feeling I knew who Lucas was. 

I asked, casually, which one was Lucas. She told me that he was the lead singer, short, blue eyes, wild hair, a Tasmanian devil crammed into the body of a nineteen year old boy.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Eliott looked terrified when I told him which one Lucas was, something I thought was probably justified. I didn’t know if they’d ever met before or anything, but if I’d only just heard of Lucas, or seen him onstage, I would have been a bit overwhelmed too. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

He looked frightened, for some reason, so I told him we didn’t have to decide at that very moment, that we could wait and talk it through some more, but he shook his head so fast I thought he gave himself whiplash. 

He said, no, he wanted to do it, and he didn’t need time to think about it. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I was nervous to see him again. Lucas. But at least this time I wouldn’t have to wait a year. 

I ended my last interview saying that I’d never fall in love again. 

_ (Eliott laughs) _

Yeah, go ahead and say ‘I told you so’.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next week: track 5: minute by minute - spring 1982 to winter 1984
> 
> listen to le premier on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4slfnz52m9SKPy6eGNzDxd
> 
> listen to the other songs on my tumblr: @kieunora
> 
> sending my love ❤️


	5. Track 5: Minute by Minute - Spring 1982 to Winter 1984

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we really in it now folks 👀 
> 
> this is roughly 35k but i hope u enjoy it because we getting down to business for real
> 
> as always, the songs will be linked on my tumblr, and the 'album' will be available via spotify playlist i'll link at the end of the chapter <3
> 
> tw: depressive episode, substance abuse, homophobia/sexism, mentions of death of a parent

_ Making quite the name for themselves with their first album, Seven Minutes in Heaven continued their rise in music history. As they prepared to start working on their second album, frontman Lucas Lallemant was dealing with his own internal crisis and what that might mean for his career— and the careers of his bandmates. Just as he was on the brink of a breakdown, Imane Bakhellal and Sofiane Alaoui added a new player into the mix: Eliott Demaury, fresh off of critical success from his first solo album, tasked with writing a duet to record and perform with Lucas himself.  _

**Imane Bakhellal (manager, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

Once Eliott agreed to work with them, I lightly suggested the rest of the group listen to  _ Le Premier _ . I didn’t say why, just that it was an album from one of Shame’s new artists, and that it had a really unique sound. That was all true. 

**Daphné Lecomte (background vocalist and percussionist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

Imane never did anything without reason. I didn’t know who Eliott Demaury was, but I had a feeling I was going to very soon. 

**Manon Demissy (lead guitarist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I really liked Eliott’s album. I mean, Eliott’s voice is very versatile, his range is insane, but on some tracks it reminded me of Daphné’s, kind of, in the light, airy way it sounded. My first thought was that he’d sound great on a track with Lucas. 

**Lucas Lallemant (lead singer, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I listened to the album while they all were playing it. He had a nice voice, interesting production. I was in my writing headspace, or at least trying to get into it, so I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have. Particularly to the face on the cover of the album.

**Basile Savary (rhythm guitarist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

Imane gave us that album and my first thought was  _ damn, this guy’s hot! _ No homo, but Eliott could get it.

**Emma Borgès (keyboardist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I didn’t care about Eliott’s music, I cared about his face. Like, yeah, I was hooking up with Yann at the time, but I’d have risked it all for Eliott Demaury, no questions asked. It was funny, I’d actually heard his name before around the city, people saying he was this wild person, but his music didn’t sound like someone who was out of control. I wanted to meet him, to get a gauge of who he was for myself.

**Yann Cazas (bassist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

Some of Eliott Demaury’s songs were a little too ‘poppy’ for me, but I liked the ones that leaned into a more old school approach, I caught a little Bowie influence in there too, and who didn’t love Bowie? 

Actually, something very interesting that he did was let his influences be heard loud and clear, but still twist it into something entirely his own. He wasn’t building something from scratch, like we tried to do with our music, he was jumping off of groundwork already laid out for him. Both approaches were successful in their own ways. 

**Arthur Broussard (drummer, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I won’t say that I’ve never liked Eliott and his music, because that’s not true. He’s a very difficult person to dislike. But I’d heard the stories, I’d come to my own conclusion about who he was, and I didn’t know why Imane suddenly wanted us to listen to his music. I thought she was going to try to have us write a song for him or something, because we were pretty good at cohesion, and his album lacked that. 

**Eliott Demaury (singer,** **_Le Premier_ ** **and** **_Polaris_ ** **):**

I had no one to talk to about why I was freaking out so much at the prospect of working with this band, because Idriss and Sofiane didn’t know I wasn’t straight, and Alexia produced Seven Minutes in Heaven’s album, so she obviously knew Lucas, and I didn’t want her meddling. I wanted to tell Idriss and Sofiane, but I was in a really good place with both of them at that moment, and I didn’t want to jeopardize it with something so controversial.

I knew that Sofiane wasn’t religious anymore, but he was still the most morally upstanding guy I knew, and religious people weren’t the only ones who had problems with people like me. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Imane asked me to meet with her separately, and I knew something was up. All I’d been able to think about since the holidays had been the guy I met and made out with in the bathroom at the Shame party, so I was sure that was what she needed to see me about. I was sure she was going to kick me out of the band for being gay. I didn’t know her stance on gay people, and I didn’t know why she’d make any exceptions for me if she didn’t have the best opinion about us.

As an aside:  _ us _ took me a long time. I’m well and comfortable referring to myself as gay or referring to the LGBTQ+ community as something that I’m a part of  _ now _ , but back then I could barely say the words to myself in the mirror. That’s part of why it’s taken me so long to come out publicly, that and the fact that my whole world was so public for so long, that once it wasn’t I wanted to keep it that way.

Regardless, I was suspicious and anxious, a terrible combination. She was with someone I didn’t recognize, who turned out to be Sofiane Alaoui, Eliott Demaury’s manager.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I didn’t want Lucas to feel like we’d all made this big plan without his input, which is why I didn’t ask Eliott to come. This way it would just seem like an idea Sofiane and I, as managers, had.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I would like it to be known that I caught the vibes between Imane and Sofiane before anyone else.

**Sofiane Alaoui (manager, Eliott Demaury):**

I really hoped Lucas would agree. I could see this being a great decision, business wise for the both of them. I also thought they’d like each other, and working together, a lot. I didn’t know much about Lucas at that point, but I knew Eliott better than most, and I got the sense that Lucas was just the type of person to balance Eliott’s sunshiny disposition.

Not that Lucas wasn’t sunshiny in his own right… I suppose I’d compare his light to that of a shooting star instead, or a supernova.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

They proposed their idea to me, and my first thought was that Imane making us listen to Eliott’s music made sense now. I probably would have considered their idea before they offered it up to me had I not been consumed by other thoughts, and now that it was laid out in front of me I didn’t know what to say. 

I hadn’t been actively paying attention to Eliott’s music, so I wasn’t really able to say whether or not our styles would work together, but I did know that I’d liked what I’d heard. 

I didn’t really want to relinquish any control over the creative process for Seven Minutes in Heaven, though. If they wanted to bring someone in to collaborate with me, that meant I wasn’t doing my job well enough on my own, and that freaked me out.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I tried to make it very clear to Lucas that this was mostly for Eliott’s sake, because of some things going down with Charles, but it was like he wasn’t even listening to me. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I said no, that I wouldn’t work with Eliott fucking Demaury. If he was so great, he shouldn’t need my help.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

It went as well as I’d expected, but I wasn’t giving up. My next step would be to talk to the rest of the band, and hopefully they’d convince him. I told him this, that we were going to run the idea by the rest of the band, but he still wasn’t paying attention.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Once I started ignoring Imane, I realized that Sofiane was really hot, and I sent myself into another spiral. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Lucas kept looking at me strangely, then after he said no to Imane, he bolted. I didn’t know what to make of the interaction. Everything I’d heard from other people about what Lucas was like didn’t match up with what I experienced. But, Imane told me to just give him time, so I did. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Imane talked to me first about collaborating with Eliott Demaury. I was all in, told her that when I’d heard the album for the first time all I could think of was how great he and Lucas would sound together. Then she told me Lucas had refused the idea, and I promised her I’d work on him. This was too good an opportunity for everyone involved to pass up. It wasn’t just Lucas’ decision to make.

**Yann Cazas:**

Manon was the one who told me about the Eliott thing, before Imane did even, because she knew the two of us would have the best chance at making it happen. I was a little worried about the idea, because some of Eliott’s work didn’t really match up with our sound, but there were some of his songs that were the kind of music people would remember for a hundred years, so I figured the risk would be worth the reward. 

I knew exactly why Lucas didn’t want to work with him, it was the same reason he basically did everything for all of our songs and then let us chime in at the last minute with feedback he only pretended to listen to. He wanted to be in charge, and we all just let it happen. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I was pissed when Imane told me they were trying to get Eliott Demaury and Lucas to collaborate on a song. I’d been wanting to write songs for the band since we started our last album, but I knew it wasn’t the time yet. I figured that now that we’d made a name for ourselves, I’d get my chance. 

But no, it went to someone I’d barely heard of, probably because he was a he, and I wasn’t. 

**Basile Savary:**

I promised Imane I’d do everything in my power to get Lucas to make a song with Eliott, because I really wanted to meet him and see if he was that hot in person. He also seemed cool, from his music. He had the vibe of someone who had his life figured out. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I knew that my opinion probably wouldn’t hold any sway in comparison to Yann’s or Manon’s, but I hoped they were successful in convincing Lucas to work with Eliott Demaury. Like I said, I wanted to meet him and see for myself if all the things I knew about him were actually true. Part of me hoped they were, part of me hoped they weren’t.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Turned out Imane didn’t want us to write a song  _ for  _ him, she wanted us to write a song  _ with  _ him. And by ‘us’, I mean Lucas. I assumed it’d never happen, I knew Lucas was against the idea and when he was dead set against something, there was usually no reasoning with him. I was fine with it going either way, to be honest. I knew any song the two of them made together would probably be great, and I knew that any other songs Lucas made without help would also be great, so there wasn’t much riding on this collaboration in my eyes.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I listened to  _ Le Premier _ a little bit more, because even though I’d said no, I was curious as to why this had been discussed in the first place. I mean, he obviously had the kind of talent you couldn’t teach, I just didn’t know what he would do for us that I couldn’t do myself. Apparently everyone else had heard stories about him at this point, but I knew nothing about him aside from his music and his last name. Everyone knew his parents, even though they’d been retired from the film industry for a little while. 

That worried me too, that he was the son of Hollywood royalty. I thought he was probably the type of person everything was handed to, and he didn’t have to work the way the rest of us did. 

Manon and Yann did their best to convince me to work with him, though, and while I could block out most people, I couldn’t block out those two. If they thought this was a good idea, it couldn’t have been a bad one. Even if Eliott Demaury turned out to be a privileged asshole who’d never had to fight for anything in his life, they seemed to want me to go for it, so I called Imane and told her I’d reconsidered. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Manon and Yann did their work well. I knew we’d wear him down eventually, but the sooner the better. His only request was that he have a meeting with Eliott to see if they’d be able to work together at all before agreeing to something. I thought that was reasonable. I also told him to put off working on any other music until this song was done, and he didn’t like that.

Part of the marketing strategy Sofiane and I had discussed involved releasing this song as a single far before their second album release, just like “Seven Minutes in Heaven” for their first album. Plus, music videos were becoming popular, with MTV running them day in and day out. Having this collaborative song and a visual to match it would be a great business move for both parties. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Imane explained all the business stuff to me, which was mostly boring but made sense. That didn’t change the fact that I wouldn’t do anything without meeting Eliott first. 

Little did I realize I already had. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I was terrified for my meeting with Lucas. The fact that there was a formal meeting at all either meant that he didn’t remember me or he did, but our managers had scheduled it and it was going to be extremely uncomfortable. I didn’t know which option scared me more. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I should have looked at the damn album cover before that meeting.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Seeing Lucas and Eliott walk into the same room for the first time was like dousing a house in gasoline and holding a match close, but not quite close enough to burn. Lucas looked like he was about to pass out, Eliott looked like he wanted to run far away and never come back, and I’m sure I just looked confused. Thankfully, Imane was there too.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I didn’t know what was wrong with Lucas, but I hissed for him to snap out of it, and then I went about my business like Lucas hadn’t nearly collapsed the minute he saw Eliott.

**Eliott Demaury:**

He remembered me, that much was clear, but he also looked surprised, like I wasn’t who he’d expected to see. I wasn’t sure how he could know who I was without knowing it was me, but Lucas has always been one to surprise. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Of all the people in LA, Eliott Demaury had to be the one I’d made out with in the bathroom at the record label holiday party. I don’t know if it would have been better or worse if we’d like, fully hooked up. People had casual sex, one night stands and the like all the time, that wasn’t anything to worry about. 

We’d just kissed, and kissed. It was romantic, it was intimate, and it was intentional. It wasn’t something I’d be able to ignore if I agreed to make a song with him. And I wanted to ignore it, I really did. I wanted to lose myself in some new music and forget that I was the way that I was. 

If the time I’d spent with him hadn’t been laced with passion and undertones of desire, I could have written it off, but the fact that it felt so right, that I’d wanted him as much as he’d appeared to want me, it was something deeper than either of us had been expecting, I think. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

He was beautiful, then, beautiful as ever, even though he was pale as a ghost and looked to be a minute away from throwing up. I tried to reassure him with my eyes that it was ok, we didn’t have to talk about it, but every time I looked at him he only looked more panicked. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

You try having Eliott Demaury stare into your soul in the midst of a gay crisis, see how much that helps anything. 

I didn’t believe in love, at that point, but if I had, I might have been thinking that all I wanted was for Eliott Demaury to love me. He looked like he had a lot of love to give, and he was just waiting for the right person to give it to.

**Eliott Demaury:**

If he’d have told me, after that meeting, that he wanted to be with me, I would have thrown caution to the wind and done whatever he wanted. He had this magnetic hold over me, and it made it impossible for me to think about anything or anyone else.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

At least my crush on Yann was gone, that much was blatantly obvious. I wasn’t so happy about  _ why _ it was gone, though. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

When he left that meeting with Imane, I thought I’d never see him again. I didn’t harbor any hard feelings for that fact, I understood completely. We obviously hadn’t had any in depth discussions about sexuality, but he was the first boy I ever kissed and I had a feeling I was his as well. It was ok for him to be freaked about it.

But then Sofiane called me a few days later and said that Lucas had agreed to do a song with me. We’d start after the weekend.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It went against every rational bone in my body, but I couldn’t stand the thought of never seeing him again. I didn’t know if it would make things better or worse to work with him on some music, but if it went poorly, at least I’d be cured of my new crush.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I asked Imane about having a couple songs that I wrote and sang on the next album, and she mostly dismissed me, saying we weren’t thinking about the rest of the album until Eliott and Lucas’ song was done. I don’t know what I expected. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I went to Eliott’s place to start working on the song. Imane said that it would be better for us to have a space away from everyone else, but I thought that might have been worse. I didn’t want to think about what alone time with Eliott might lead to.

Thankfully, Idriss was there. I was kind of surprised, considering he’d just won his first Oscar, but I guess he was taking a little break between projects.

**Idriss Bakhellal (actor,** **_Life is Now_ ** **):**

Imane had told me to supervise the two of them, which was why I was home. I thought they could handle themselves just fine, but she told me there had been a super weird vibe between them when they’d met the week before, and she wanted to make sure everything would be fine. 

I didn’t know what she was talking about at first, but then I got it. It was like they were walking on eggshells around one another, for no reason at all. It was oddly cordial, and I’d never seen Lucas be cordial with  _ anyone _ before. It was unnerving. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I didn’t want to do anything to make Lucas reconsider, so I tried to keep it professional as possible. If he wanted to talk about what happened between us, I’d let him take the lead.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott seemed intent on not mentioning what had happened between the two of us, so I followed his lead. In retrospect, it probably would have been a good idea to talk about it, but I was more stupid at twenty than I am now, which is saying something.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

They worked together for a few days and I was always the supervisor in the shadows, making sure nothing went wrong. The real problem was that nothing even ‘went’ at all. I don’t think they got any work done, they were both so quiet the entire time they were together, every once and a while chiming in to ask some question that had no real bearing on their songwriting process.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t like the current dynamic we were working with, and unfortunately the only way I knew how to do anything different was to be combative.

**Eliott Demaury:**

He was so pretty.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I think Lucas must have gotten tired of the pleasantries about a week into their collaboration, because all of a sudden he went from zero to one hundred, and not in a good way. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t know why I was being mean to him, he didn’t deserve it. I was just spewing all the frustrations I was having with myself at him, and he just took it all.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Yeah, I mean, he was a dick. He kept telling me that my album wasn’t even that good and that I didn’t know how to write a proper song and whatnot, and I just let him because I knew that he was just taking out whatever he was going through on me. I can tell when someone means what they’re saying, and he didn’t mean it. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t mean any of the shitty things I said. I actually liked his music, thought he could write really beautiful songs, but he was there, in front of me, and he was more beautiful than ever, and maybe if I convinced myself he wasn’t so great, I’d stop wanting to kiss his stupid face every time I saw him.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I could only take so much, though. I’d spent enough time considering the things he was saying myself, and hearing them from someone else made me think they had some validity, even if I knew he wasn’t being serious. 

He never called me crazy, but I didn’t want us to get to that point. He could hate me if he needed to, but I didn’t want to have to hate him too. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I told him one night, after Lucas left, that he couldn’t just let Lucas treat him like that, and he just told me I didn’t understand. I asked him to help me understand, but he refused.

**Eliott Demaury:**

The only person I could really talk about all this with was Alexia, but I didn’t want her to know about Lucas, so I let it all build up inside me. I should have said something sooner, I knew I should probably have addressed the elephant in the room before we both let it get to that point, but I wasn’t ready to, and selfishly I didn’t want that confrontation. 

Unfortunately, bottling my emotions wasn’t great for my mental health, and one day when Lucas came over to ‘work’— because let’s be honest, we weren’t working— I couldn’t find the strength to get myself out of bed or find the motivation to want to deal with everything. I hadn’t felt that way in a long time, and it was terrifying.

I’m not saying that the way Lucas was acting sent me into a depressive spiral, because if I got depressed every time someone was mean to me, it would have happened a lot with Charles and others already. I think it was just the weight of this thing that I was carrying finally crashing down on me. I needed to talk about it, but there was no one, in my mind, who I could talk to.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I won’t lie, I was pissed at Lucas. I assumed that if Eliott was depressed, it was his fault, so I— not so kindly— told him that Eliott wouldn’t be working with him anymore, and he should be ashamed of his behavior. Imane gave me an earful afterward, but I was just looking out for Eliott in the best way I could think of.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I didn’t just chew out Idriss, I chewed out Lucas too. He wasn’t generally mean spirited, so I had no idea what his problem with Eliott was. He refused to talk to me, so I sent Manon and Yann after him again, but he refused to talk to them too. Lucas Lallemant was a frustrating person to work with sometimes.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I have problems with trusting anything good in my life, and I think I was so worried about Eliott being something good that I tried my damndest to ruin it before it ruined me. But once it was gone, once Idriss told me to leave and not come back and Imane yelled at me for hours about how I needed to grow up and realize there were people other than me in the world, I realized I didn’t want it to be gone. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Has he told you guys about… any of his relationships? Other than Chloé? 

Yeah? Ok, then I’m going to talk about some things, but I want you to cut them out if Lucas doesn’t give his permission for them to be heard by the general public.

_ (Daphné pauses) _

As I said before, I had a feeling I knew what Lucas was dealing with. I’d dealt with some of it myself, and was still dealing with some of it, I just was more confident in who I was earlier than him, and that’s fine, we all deserve to come to terms with our identities on our own time.

He was never open with me before, and I wasn’t upset about it or anything because I wasn’t open with him either. I still think that only Baz and Arthur knew I was a lesbian at that point, but I wasn’t really trying to hide it from anyone. I knew that it might have had an impact on how people saw the band, so I didn’t publicly speak about my sexuality for a while, but I wanted the people close to me to know. Including Lucas.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t know how Daphné could see it when I was hiding it so carefully, but I learned after a while that she was more observant than most. I let her come in to talk to me because she told me she wanted to talk about our next album, but obviously that was a lie.

To her credit, she did say that I didn’t have to say anything if I didn’t want to, but she told me that she was a lesbian, and if I was dealing with anything similar at all, I could talk to her and she’d never tell a soul.

I needed that, so I spilled everything.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I was not expecting to hear about him and Eliott Demaury almost hooking up at the holiday party. I’d suspected he was into Yann, so when he said that it made sense, but the Eliott stuff was all new.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was reluctant to tell her about why Eliott wasn’t going to work with me anymore, but she was listening without judgement, so I told her that too. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Lucas is a very reactionary person, and when he doesn’t know what to do he either internalizes it, puts it into his music, or, when either of those become too much to handle, he takes it out on the people he feels close to. I mentioned this to him and he looked at me like I was a ghost or something.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I felt kind of bad that I hadn’t bothered to know her half as well as she seemed to know me. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I asked him if he’d have reacted like that with Chloé, he said never. It seemed pretty obvious to me what that meant about how he felt about Eliott, but if I needed to spell it out for him I would. 

I told him that if he liked someone enough that he was willing to let them see the worst of him, he needed to get his ass over to Eliott’s place and talk shit out. It wouldn’t help anything for him to sulk at home thinking Eliott hated him.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

What she said made sense, logically, but I was scared. I didn’t want him to reject me— not even as a lover, I could have handled that, but as a person. I knew he was a better person than I was, but it made me want to be at least a little bit better too. 

Still, I knew that I probably should talk to him. About everything, not just the current dilemma. We’d gotten to this point because neither of us wanted to address the obvious, and it clearly wasn’t doing either one of us any good. I may not have been ready to tell people other than him and Daphné about my crisis of sexuality, but if he was willing to listen, that was all I wanted anyway. 

Of course, I didn’t know if Idriss would kick me out the minute I rang their bell, but I guess I had to try.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Lucas should have learned then that communication solves practically everything. I should have, too. We all should have.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I hid out for a few more days and ignored pointed stares from Daphné. By the time I finally mustered up the courage, it had been a week since I left Eliott’s place with no intention of returning. I had about ten speeches planned out in my head, and I didn’t yet know which one I would use. Ten more for what I’d say when and if I saw Idriss. 

I rang the buzzer, and waited. There was no response, so I rang again, receiving the same results.

I didn’t want to ring again, because it seemed no one was home, so I stood out on the curb weighing my options. It would have been more logical for me to just go home, but what if Eliott arrived home just as I left? Maybe I should have called beforehand, but I didn’t want Idriss to file a restraining order or something before I could even make it there.

About an hour after I initially arrived, someone left the building, and I saw my opportunity. I slipped inside and went up to their floor, thinking maybe I could leave a note under the door or something, I’d brought my notebook just in case we got down to songwriting. 

I knocked, just to make sure no one was home, waited about ten seconds listening for any movement. I didn’t hear any, so I started writing my note, addressing it to Eliott but keeping it vague enough because I knew Idriss would read it too. Just as I was about to slip it under the door, the door opened.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I thought Idriss had forgotten his keys, that was the only reason I got out of bed. I was not expecting to see Lucas crouched in front of the door. Maybe I would have laughed if I had been in the laughing mood. 

He started stuttering out an explanation anyway, face red with embarrassment. I can’t say I processed any of it, and I think he noticed, because he stopped talking and searched me with those luminous blue eyes of his.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It took me a minute to actually look at Eliott, but once I did I could see something was wrong, something that went deeper than any strife between the two of us.

**Eliott Demaury:**

He asked me if I was all right in the softest voice I’d ever heard from him, like he actually cared, and maybe that’s why I told the truth.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

He said no, and a single tear slipped down his cheek. I wanted to protect him from anything that was hurting him, which was pretty ironic considering I’d probably hurt him a week previously. 

I probably should have asked if I could come in, but he didn’t stop me when I did. I assumed Idriss wasn’t home, so I closed the door behind us and I pulled him into me.

**Eliott Demaury:**

He just held me, right there in front of the door. I let him. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

After a few minutes, he wrapped his arms around me too, and pressed his face into my shoulder. It felt to me like he was Atlas, bearing the weight of the world, and he wanted to let go so badly. 

It wasn’t my job to make sure he didn’t let go, but I figured I’d do everything in my power to make him not want to let go anymore. It was the best I could offer, and I hoped it was enough. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

He was more than enough just by being there.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

We moved to his bedroom after a little while, because he said he was tired, and I thought it might be weird for Idriss to come home to us hugging in the doorway. 

I sat down on a chair beside his bed, fully content to work out some new lyrics while he slept, or just sit there and watch him without him knowing, and he just rolled his eyes and said, 

“Don’t be ridiculous”.

I didn’t know what I was being ridiculous about until he patted the bed like he wanted me to lie down beside him. 

Now, by that point, my heart was threatening to beat out of my chest, but I kept my cool, slipping out of my jacket and laying a healthy distance away. I asked what he needed, and he said he just needed someone to be there so he didn’t feel alone. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I fell asleep pretty quickly after Lucas laid down with me, but some of the pressure I’d been feeling on my chest lessened knowing he was there. I’m not sure if it mattered that it was  _ him _ , in particular, I can’t really say, but part of me was glad that it was him. Obviously, he’d been an asshole, and we needed to address that, but I didn’t want or need any sort of confrontation in how I was feeling at the moment. I just wanted to forget that problems existed and pretend for a minute that we were falling asleep together because it was something we did every night. 

I didn’t tell him that, obviously.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but I was tired. Whenever my anxiety spiked, so did my sleeplessness. Later, they told me it was insomnia, but I didn’t have a word for it yet. I didn’t know why it was so easy to fall asleep beside him, but it was. I felt safe. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

What I was not expecting when I got home was to go check on Eliott and see Lucas sleeping beside him. Their hands were centimeters apart, like they’d either fallen asleep holding hands, or had unconsciously reached toward one another in their sleep. That was none of my business, so I didn’t comment on it. Pissed as I was that Lucas was there at all, I wasn’t going to wake them both to kick Lucas out, lest it make Eliott more upset.

So, I made some noodles, turned on the tv, and waited for one of them to wake up. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I woke up before Lucas did, probably because I’d been sleeping so much I didn’t really need more of it. Lucas clearly needed the sleep, though, because he slept through the entire night. At that point, I knew that Idriss was probably home, but I didn’t want to deal with that yet, so I just stayed in bed beside Lucas, focusing on his breathing to ease the feeling I’d had for the past week that I was suffocating. 

At some point I drifted off again, and when I woke up in the pale morning light, Lucas’ face was in my chest. He looked so peaceful, I didn’t want to disturb him, but I also didn’t know how he’d react to waking up so intimately. 

I inched back slowly, carefully, until there was enough space between us that, when he woke, he would have no cause for alarm.

_ (Eliott laughs) _

He was alarmed anyway, because I think he’d forgotten where he was and why he was there, so I pretended to wake up at the same time just in case he thought I was weird for sitting there watching him.

I felt lighter that morning, still not as light as usual, but light enough that I found myself smiling when he turned to look at me with wide, confused eyes. I think you’re going to hear me talk about his eyes a lot over the course of this, so I’d just liked to apologize in advance if any of my descriptions get a bit too poetic in the future.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott was smiling at me when I turned and saw him lying there in bed beside me and it filled me with so much affection and relief that I think I smiled too. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

He smiled back at me and I let myself pretend, for a moment, that this was a regular thing. That he was my boyfriend, and we went to bed together every night and woke up in the morning with smiles on our faces knowing that we were loved.

Dear god, there I go again.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Once I remembered where I was, I was very embarrassed, not only that I’d accidentally fallen asleep, but also that I’d clearly slept in longer than he had.

**Eliott Demaury:**

He started apologizing like crazy for sleeping and I had to cut him off because who apologizes for sleeping? I was glad that he was there, and he’d clearly needed the sleep. I told him as much, and he got all quiet, pensive.

I didn’t know why until he asked me, “You’re glad I’m here?” 

I said yes, because I really was. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was such a jerk to him, he shouldn’t have been happy I was there. Still he did seem happier than he had the day before, which I thought was good. He didn’t quite look like  _ Eliott _ yet, but he was closer. 

I apologized after that, for the way I’d acted before, and said that I’d still love to write a song with him, if he wanted the same. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I did want the same. I also thanked him for his apology and forgave him, because even though I was mostly over everything he’d said, it was still nice to hear. I’d never received many apologies from anyone in my life, and though I hadn’t had the worst life so far, there were some moments I wouldn’t have minded hearing an apology or even an acknowledgement of my pain or what I’d gone through.

I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t depressed because of him, because I think he thought the way I was at the moment was his fault, but it was no one’s, really. Just my brain fucking me over as per usual. I even wanted to tell him I was bipolar, but in the same way that I hadn’t told Idriss or Sofiane that I wasn’t straight, I didn’t know how he’d react, and I didn’t want to risk that. 

Instead, I asked if we could talk about what happened at the holiday party. It needed to be addressed, whether we wanted to address it or not. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was kind of glad he brought it up. I agreed, but I think it would have taken me a whole lot more courage to say something, especially when he looked the way he did in the morning light, sun tumbling off his soft hair and illuminating all the colors in his eyes. I almost asked him to close the blinds, his beauty was so stunning to me. As if that would have helped anything.

I asked if he’d meant it, because he could probably have anyone he wanted in the world, there was no reason for him to choose me, even just for one night.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Of course I meant it, and I told him so, I couldn’t comprehend how he could ever think otherwise. In addition, I confided in him that I wasn’t entirely sure of my sexuality, but I never would have kissed him if I hadn’t been attracted to him on a multitude of levels. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t really know there could be any options other than gay or straight. From the way he was talking, it seemed like he could be attracted to anyone of any gender. That was very new to me, but I sort of recalled Alexia talking similarly while we worked on FMOF. I’ll be honest, I mostly thought it was just an Alexia thing, and I never questioned it because she could do whatever she wanted as far as I was concerned, but it was interesting for me to start to learn more about a community that was much larger than I’d initially thought. 

Me, though, I was nearly positive I was gay. Even when I’d been ‘into’ Chloé, it was always performative. I’d assumed everyone felt like that, but after Eliott I knew that couldn’t be true. It did hurt to think that Chloé felt about me the way I could never feel about her. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

He told me that he was pretty sure that he was gay, through and through, and he wanted to emphasize he hadn’t just kissed me as some sort of experiment, though I’d never thought that was the case.

I asked where that left us. I didn’t say that it was clear we both had feelings for one another, because I didn’t know if that would have been too forward or not. 

To this day, I still wonder if our lives would have ended up differently if I’d said so instead of keeping it to myself. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, as they say.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I wasn’t ready to be out, in any capacity. I was fine with him knowing, because of the obvious, and I was fine with Daphné knowing because I couldn’t really talk about my inner turmoil about Eliott  _ with _ Eliott, and she also knew what I was going through.

He asked what that meant, about us, and I told him that there couldn’t be an us, at least not in any romantic sense. I didn’t think I was ready for that, and I didn’t want to hold him back by not being ready. Maybe, if I would have woken up in his arms, both of us finding our way to each other in the night, I would have suggested something different. Maybe I would have decided to give this thing between us a go. But as it was, I was scared, and scared Lucas hardly did anything worth much to anyone. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I understood, I really did, but my heart broke a little bit. I wasn’t in love with him, but I could see myself getting there with time. Now that would never happen. I knew that it was probably good for me not to fall in love again, but the minute Lucas appeared in my life all the warnings I told myself to never give myself to someone like I had to Camille went straight out the window. 

I asked if that meant we were just co writers for this song, then, if I would never see him again after it, and he looked at me like I’d said the most outlandish thing.

_ (Eliott smiles) _

I still remember exactly what he said right after, he said, “Eliott, I woke up in bed next to you this morning because I’d spent a week without seeing you and I felt like I’d lost a vital part of myself. I’d like for us to be friends, if you’re willing.”

Now, that was one of the most romantic things I’d ever heard, but I held my hand out to shake and said, “Friends.” 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Neither one of us let go of each other’s hand, even as we kept talking until morning turned to afternoon and Idriss must really have been wondering what the hell was going on. I still didn’t know if he knew I was there or not, but I was fine with keeping it that way.

Eliott had a gentle touch, the kind that sent shivers running down my spine but kept me grounded all the same. He kept brushing his thumb across the back of my hand absently, and I had to do my best to keep my expression neutral, already regretting suggesting we be friends. 

We talked about nothing, I don’t even remember the details, but I could see the light coming back into his eyes more and more with each word, so I wanted us to keep talking as long as possible.

After a while, I think he remembered that we had lives to attend to, and that I’d been wearing somewhat stiff jeans in bed for many hours, so he offered me a change of clothes, implying I’d be staying longer. I should have been getting home by then, but instead I accepted his offer of clothes. He was my friend, after all, and I had to be there for my friends when they needed me.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I offered him clothes for purely selfish reasons. I have no problem admitting that now. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I forgot he was probably a good six inches taller than me, so I drowned in the sweater and sweatpants he gave me. I probably looked so ridiculous.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I needed to excuse myself to the restroom for a bit once he changed into my clothes. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott went to the bathroom for a while, so I didn’t know if he’d gone to shower or something, but I was kind of hungry, and I assumed he would be too, so I decided to venture out quietly as possible to make us something to eat. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I hadn’t showered in about a week, I’d noticed once I was in the bathroom. I couldn’t help it, really, when I was feeling so down, but being with Lucas, acting like things were normal, I’d actually started to feel more like myself again. At least enough to take a shower. 

Yes, it was a very cold shower, yes, you already know why, I don’t need to spell it out for you. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I thought my plan to creep into the kitchen undetected was successful, because I thought Idriss was either still out or out again. 

He startled the shit out of me is what he did, standing on the far end of the kitchen I wouldn’t have seen when I walked in, sipping a mug of tea idly. Asshole. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I’d been expecting Eliott, not Lucas, because I hadn’t actually even known if Lucas was still there. I’d made myself scarce enough that he’d had plenty of opportunities to leave undetected. What I had certainly not been expecting was the sight of Lucas Lallemant, rockstar extraordinaire, walking on his tiptoes into my kitchen with a massive bedhead and wearing Eliott’s clothes. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I probably said something really intelligent like, “Fucking shit!”

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

He nearly jumped a foot in the air, eyes way too wide and surprised for someone who wasn’t even in his own apartment. I’d pretty much planned out what I would say to Eliott, but Lucas required an entirely different script.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I don’t know if Eliott told him about what had happened between us, before, but somehow he seemed to know. Or maybe he could just see right through me. I guess I  _ was _ wearing Eliott’s clothes, which was strictly platonic, actually, but he wasn’t totally off base if he’d assumed something based off that. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I asked him what his intentions were with Eliott, because he’d been through a lot and didn’t need another person in his life to treat him like shit because he was an easy target.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I’m pretty sure he was giving me the shovel talk, and I tried to interrupt to explain that that very much was not necessary, but he was relentless

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I said that whatever he did, he had to treat Eliott right, you know? Eliott was like my little brother, and I didn’t care what he was doing with who as long as it wasn’t Camille, but if Lucas continued to be an asshole we’d be having a problem. 

Then he told me that he didn’t know what I was talking about, he’d just come over to apologize and had accidentally fallen asleep. Now, I didn’t totally believe that, but I let him think I did and acted apologetic. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I know he didn’t believe me, but it was technically true.

**Eliott Demaury:**

When I came into the kitchen I thought I’d have to diffuse a bomb. Idriss was looking at Lucas warily, Lucas was looking at Idriss with increasing anticipation, and Lucas was in my clothes. Instead, I made a bowl of cereal.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I completely forgot about Lucas, because Eliott was there in the kitchen for the first time in a week.

He told me that he and Lucas were going to start working on their song again and said nothing more. He didn’t look one hundred percent, but he looked about halfway there, and I was happy enough about that that I didn’t question him or Lucas any further.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

We didn’t work on the song, Eliott didn’t feel up to it. But we did play a few card games. I’ve never been a huge fan of them, but Eliott was strangely good at all of them. I didn’t even have to let him win.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Back when I was a teenager hanging out at random bars, people would teach me card games to play to pass the time. I got really good at them. Lucas was almost laughably terrible at them. I think it’s the first thing he’d ever been bad at in his life. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Being bad at things wouldn’t have been half as fun if it hadn’t been so endearing to see Eliott laughing at me. He was the only one allowed to see me like that, because even though I was losing, I still felt like I was doing better than I had been in a while.

**Eliott Demaury:**

He was funny, but he didn’t seem to know it. Every time I would laugh at something he said, he would look all flustered like laughing was the last thing he expected me to do. That could also have been on account of the state he’d found me in the day before, though. Part of me wanted to tell him what was going on, now that we’d broken down a lot of barriers we’d been too afraid to talk about before, but I still wasn’t sure. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

We were the only two people in the room, but he seemed so genuinely interested in everything I said that it felt like we were the only two people on earth. I faintly remembered that a life existed outside of Eliott’s bedroom, but I didn’t want to get back to it. I didn’t even think to call and let my bandmates know where I was and why. 

I didn’t really know why I was still there myself.

I learned very quickly that Eliott was a terrible chef, because he offered to make us dinner, and I almost vomited into the sink. That was when I remembered we weren’t alone in the world, actually, because Idriss could be heard laughing from the other room.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Listen, Lucas and I got over our issues— ok,  _ my _ issues with him— rather quickly, I was just really protective over Eliott, because I was one of the only people who knew what was really going on in his life and in his head. 

Hearing someone eat something Eliott cooked will always be one of the greatest joys I’ve ever experienced, though, you really can’t beat it. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I’m really not that bad of a cook! I made eggs! I remember that I made eggs, because eggs are impossible to fuck up, and maybe I wanted to impress him a little. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I mean, I probably should have known we were doomed when he added cinnamon. But I was giving him the benefit of the doubt, he seemed very confident in his skills in the kitchen. That would be the last time for a long time that I ever ate something he made knowingly. The blueberry bacon muffin incident doesn’t count, because he told me Sofiane made those. God, my stomach will never forgive me for that one. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I asked him if he was going to stay the night again, and he immediately apologized for staying the night previously, which is not what I meant at all. I meant that I wanted him to stay, but I didn’t know how to say it. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I wanted to stay, so I made an excuse. I said that I needed to wash my own clothes to wear back to my place the next morning, and he agreed. I offered to stay on the couch, but he told me not to be ridiculous, that there was plenty of room in his bed, and he promised not to kiss me again. I tried to silence the part of me that wished he would.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I figured that joking about it was the only way for me to get over him, and he took it in stride. He also agreed to sleep in my bed with me, which was an entirely selfish request but I wouldn’t cross any boundaries, obviously. I just wanted to watch the way he breathed in the silence, when there was nothing but him and his dreams.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I felt like a little kid, sharing a bed with Manon and telling secrets until neither one of us could keep our eyes open. Eliott and I weren’t sharing secrets, but the sentiment remained the same. I don’t know which of us drifted off first.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I only pretended to fall asleep first. He was clearly tired, body still catching up from all the sleep he obviously hadn’t had in quite some time, if ever, so I let him sleep by pretending I was as well. Truthfully, I was tired too, but it felt like a heavy tiredness, and I knew well enough to be afraid of it. It was one thing for my depression to knock me out, day after day, night after night, but it was another for it to come so close, but for my brain to go on the defensive just before it could. I hated it, it felt like I was trapped.

I’m not proud of it, but I was feeling so weak in that moment that Lucas was the only thing that felt safe. I pulled him into me, wrapped him in all the warmth I had to give, and hoped that maybe he’d give me some back. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I woke up the next morning with my face in Eliott’s chest, and his arm slung around me. It was how I’d been hoping, subconsciously, to wake up together the day before. Now, though, I couldn’t get away fast enough, because we’d just established boundaries and decided to be friends, and I didn’t want him to think I was disrespecting that. 

When he did wake up, I saw immediately that something shifted in the night. His eyes looked hollow, like he’d been awake all night, though I knew that couldn’t be true. 

I didn’t know what to do or say, so I just said good morning, gave him the best smile I could muster. He turned over on his other side, facing away from me. I took that as my cue to leave, so I got up as gently as I could, trying to find where the clothes I came in were. We both knew I hadn’t stayed over to wash them. 

But then he said “no”. I thought I’d misheard at first, but he said it again. He asked me not to leave. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I couldn’t look him in the eye, I didn’t want him to see me like that, but I didn’t want him to leave either. He’d seen me broken down on our doorstep, but even that didn’t compare to how I was feeling at that moment, for no reason at all. What did I have to be upset about? 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I couldn’t say no to him, so I sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for him to tell me what he needed. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I asked him to lay back down, to sing me a song.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was stuck by a wave of emotion so intense I almost burst into tears, though I had no idea where the urge came from at first. Then, I realized, this reminded me of mornings with my mother, when she wasn’t feeling strong enough to face the world. Panic shot through my chest in the fact that I’d drawn this comparison, because even though I knew my mother and Eliott were two entirely different people, the thought of losing Eliott was something I couldn’t bear to consider. I’d only known him five months, barely, there was no excuse for me to feel that way. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I thought he wasn’t going to, for a minute, because he was so silent I wondered if he was even still in the room with me, but then there was a shifting of weight on the bed, and his soft voice filled the room. It wasn’t his usual tone of voice, this one felt private. 

I realized I recognized the song, even though he was singing it in French. I recognized it, but not from him. It was the song he hadn’t sang when his band played on New Year’s over a year beforehand. I wondered if he’d written it originally in French, I wondered how I hadn’t known he was also French. 

When he was done, I asked him to sing it again, and he did. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Yes, I refused to sing that song for everyone but him. I didn’t do it for the reason you’re thinking, I did it because I never could for my mom. I was trying to make amends in the only way I could think of. I didn’t know if I believed in heaven, but I hoped that my mom was listening to me sing somewhere beautiful, where all her worries were nonexistent. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

After he was done for the second time, I asked him why he hadn’t sung that song live. He didn’t ask me how I’d known, maybe he thought it was general knowledge or maybe he didn’t care, he just told me that he couldn’t ever sing that one on stage. He’d written it for his mom, because she’d struggled with some undiagnosed issues and he’d wanted to let her know how loved she was. 

I thought that was really beautiful of him. He then told me he’d never gotten a chance to sing it for her, though, because she’d killed herself the day he called to sing it to her. The day Seven Minutes in Heaven had gotten a record deal.

I didn’t know what to say.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t want him to say anything, I didn’t even know why I was telling him all of that. I thought he was going to tell me to leave, but instead he told me that he was manic depressive. Those were the words they had for bipolar disorder, at the time. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

It just came out. I didn’t mean for it to, but I did.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t really know what that meant, but I didn’t need some grand explanation at that moment. Not unless he wanted to give me one, which he didn’t look like he did. He told me that he didn’t know why he’d said that, and he told me that I could leave if I wanted to, but why would I have left?

**Eliott Demaury:**

He said, “Oh, do you want me to leave? Because I don’t really want to, but if that’s what you want I will.” I looked at him like he’d grown another head. Why didn’t he want to leave?

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Mental illness didn’t scare me. That was what I assumed manic depressive disorder was, anyway, a mental illness. I didn’t have any mental illnesses that I knew of, and I was a disaster, so he couldn’t have been worse than me. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

He asked me why that should make a difference in anything. I didn’t know how to respond, because it shouldn’t, but it had. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

He told me everything that had gone down with his album, and why we were really here supposedly writing a song together instead of writing on our own. I’ve never really liked Charles, I always got a bad vibe from him, but I was so pissed off after Eliott told me everything he went through. Eliott’s music was really good, and it deserved to have real success, not just accidental success despite the best efforts of his record label. 

I don’t think he needed me to be angry on his behalf, though, I’m sure Idriss had that one covered, so I just decided to look for some positives, definitely not my strong suit, but I was willing to try for him.

**Eliott Demaury:**

He smiled to himself, and he blushed, which didn’t make much sense within the context of our conversation, so I asked him what was wrong. He said nothing was wrong, he was just thinking about how he should thank Charles.

I asked him to elaborate, because I wasn’t sure if he was being serious or not.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

If Charles hadn’t interfered, I wouldn’t have had the chance to write a song with him. We might never have even seen each other again. Or at all, maybe he would have been on tour during the holiday party, and we never would have met. I was just glad to now have him in my life, so if I had to thank Charles for that, I would.

**Eliott Demaury:**

It was really hard to remember that things were strictly platonic between us when he said things like that. Nevertheless, I said that I was glad to have him in my life too. Because I was, and I think he needed to know that too.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I wanted to kiss him really badly. Really, really badly. I’d never wanted to kiss anyone like I wanted to kiss him. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

He looked a bit like he was holding his breath, and I wondered what it was he had to say. When he did say something, it didn’t seem like what he’d been building up to, but I didn’t say anything about it. He asked me if I wanted to talk about being manic depressive, what that meant to me. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

He gave me the medical definition, but I told him that wasn’t what I meant. I wanted to know what it meant to  _ him _ . How he felt, day by day, because a diagnosis was one thing, but only he could feel what he felt. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Only I can feel what I feel. No one had ever told me that before, and I’ve held it close since then. I thought about how I felt, and I told him that for the most part I felt like me, and me was generally positive, always looking for the best in people even when they didn’t deserve it. Me was passionate to a fault, but always second guessing myself. Being unable to live a day without making or consuming art in some form. But it was also feeling too sure of myself sometimes for no reason, deciding to do things that might get me killed because it was the only thing that made me feel alive. Some days it was like that day, where I would wake up with a weight so heavy on my chest all I wanted to do was sleep until it left me. Sometimes I’d push people away for no good reason, I’d lose my temper without warning or cry myself to sleep in the middle of the afternoon. I could be mean, when I wasn’t feeling my best, even though I tried my best not to be in general. I could see why I was a burden, why the only people that wanted me in their lives were the ones who felt some sort of obligation to me. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I cut him off, because the last part just wasn’t true. Idriss didn’t stick around because he  _ had _ to, Sofiane didn’t stick around out of pity. They loved him. I could see he didn’t believe me, though.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I said, “You say that now, but what about when I yell at you for no reason, or when we’re supposed to be writing together and I bail again for a week because I can’t get my ass out of bed? Will you stick around too, because you want to? Or because you have to?”

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It was stupid to think about the future, I decided, because, really, the Russians could have bombed us the next day and none of what we were talking about would have mattered at all. Besides, I think he was forgetting that I was a world class asshole, that I’d yell at him too, I’d give him the silent treatment, I’d isolate myself from everyone I loved for no reason at all. And I wasn’t bipolar— or manic depressive, as they called it at the time— I was just a fucked up kid looking for something to fill the endless void I felt in my soul.

My mom and I, we had this thing we’d say whenever things got to be too much, for either one of us. We’d say, “When things get hard, take them day by day. If that’s too much, take them hour by hour, and if that’s too much, take it minute by minute.” 

Minute by minute was a philosophy I’d forgotten as of late, probably since my mom died, but it was a relief to remember it. Even Manon didn’t know about it, it was something my mom and I shared between the two of us only. And now I was sharing it with Eliott, not just because he needed it, but because I did too. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Minute by minute. I liked the sound of it. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

He asked me, “What do we do in this minute, then?” and you know what I wanted to say? I wanted to say, “In this minute, we kiss.” 

But I didn’t, because we were friends.

**Eliott Demaury:**

He didn’t say anything when I asked, but he didn’t need to. In the silence, I started to feel an idea forming in my mind, and I felt more awake than I had in days.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

He had this look on his face like a lightbulb had just blinked on over his head.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Minute by minute. That was our song, it had to be. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Part of me was hesitant, because that was something very private to me, but then I chided myself for thinking that way. It was a universal philosophy, really, and everyone deserved to hear it. I wasn’t sure how the song would turn out yet, barely had any ideas— or maybe had too many— but whatever we had to say on the matter, it deserved to be heard.

I agreed, and that was the beginning of one of the most iconic songs we ever made. One of our best too, in my completely unbiased opinion.

**Eliott Demaury:**

We didn’t work on it at all after that, because he remembered that he had a life outside my apartment and Manon was probably moments away from sending out a search party, but I was feeling better, not completely yet, but a little more like I had the day before. He told me he’d stay if I wanted him to, and I did, but I didn’t say so. I told him to go home, take a week, and then we’d start working for real.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

A week was an awfully long time to wait, but I understood. He didn’t know when that wave of depression would pass and wanted to give himself some time to feel like the best version of himself again. 

I thought any version was pretty good.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I felt oddly emotional about him leaving, so I figured it was best to just rip off the bandaid, a simple goodbye, see you later, close the door, but before I could, he went off script from what I’d arranged in my head. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Just before I left, I told him that, just for his information, I’d rather have him annoy me than not have him in my life at all, and then, feeling like I’d revealed myself a little bit too much, I bolted out of there as fast as I could. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

_ We were friends we were friends we were friends we were friends.  _

I swear, it took all my willpower not to run after him and kiss him senseless. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I got my ass kicked when I came home, but I expected that. 

**Manon Demissy:**

What was the point of having phones if no one was going to use them, hm? I swear to fucking god… 

**Basile Savary:**

I had a lot of downtime, while Lucas was off writing or whatever he was doing. We all did. A lot of time was spent at the Sun and various other places, but to our surprise, it wasn’t as easy as before. People knew who we were now. Not everyone, everywhere, but enough people, enough places. 

I met this girl named Maria one night, out at the Palace, I think, and it wasn’t that I’d expected her to know who I was, but I hadn’t expected her not to. I don’t remember what I said, but it was probably dumb and egotistical, and she gave me my shit right back, and I never made that mistake with her or anyone ever again.

I asked for her number at the end of the night, and she gave it to me, and we started seeing each other a lot after that. She worked as a nurse, which I knew absolutely nothing about, but I was willing to learn, for her. I’d never felt anything quite like what I felt for her before. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Suddenly Baz was out with Maria every night, and I sort of lost my best friend for a little while. Not in the ways that mattered, he was still always there if I needed him, but we were a little more distanced than usual. That was when I got closer to Yann, because he was feeling the same way about Lucas now that he was always off with Eliott. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Lucas and Eliott were joined at the hip, I swear. You couldn’t see one without the other. I wondered if this was how Manon felt when Lucas and I started hanging out during high school, and if it was, I owed her an apology. It was really annoying at times. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Eliott hung out with us all the time, but he didn’t hang out with  _ us _ , you know? He was friendly enough, we all liked him, and he liked us, but he only paid attention to Lucas, and Lucas only paid attention to him. I didn’t get why they were like that with each other. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

They were so obvious. And yet, no one noticed but me. Not even Lucas and Eliott. They thought that the way they acted around each other was totally platonic. Men are so fucking stupid.

**Eliott Demaury:**

How was songwriting going? In the simplest terms: it wasn’t. Not because we were stuck, or didn’t have ideas, but because we didn’t want the process to be over just yet. We knew that once we wrote the song, then everyone would have to be involved in the production and such, and then it would be out in the world and he’d have to work on the band’s next album and we wouldn’t be able to see each other every day anymore. So, we didn’t do our jobs for quite some time.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott dragged me to art museums all the time, it was fun, seeing LA through his eyes. We never went out with our friends at night, which was probably good for us both, but I could tell they were getting annoyed with me. 

I wanted to scream at them for being annoyed, but I knew I couldn’t, because they were probably justified in a lot of ways. I just liked my life for the first time in a long time, and I didn’t want to do anything to upset that.

**Yann Cazas:**

Eliott and Lucas had a ridiculous amount of inside jokes. Like, a seriously ridiculous amount. I didn’t even have that many inside jokes with Lucas, and we’d known each other for years.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wanted to remember every minute. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I wanted each minute we spent together to last forever. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Seriously, how did they not figure it out?

**Imane Bakhellal:**

After about two months with no progress from Eliott and Lucas, I decided to meet with them and with Sofiane, just to make sure everything was all right.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Imane and I had been spending a lot of time together, because strangely neither of us had much to do regarding the musicians we represented. Imane thought it was suspicious, but I just liked spending time with her.

Idriss and Imane were a lot more alike than they’d ever admit, but they were also both so incredibly individualistic that it was hard to even remember that they were related sometimes.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Imane was not happy to hear that we’d made no progress on our song. She wanted to release it sooner than later, but I convinced her that wasn’t the smartest marketing strategy. I mean, it’d probably take us about a year or so to make the whole next album, and we wanted enough time between the single and the album to drum up hype, but not too much. I thought we should release the single at the end of the year, or maybe the beginning of ‘83, and then the album early ‘84. That way we had plenty of time to make the best album possible, and we could still fit in some performances or whatever marketing things Imane wanted us to do in between.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I hated to admit that what Lucas was saying made sense. I didn’t want to wait too long, but I thought that maybe we could release the song worldwide first, then the video later, or maybe we’d do them simultaneously for double the impact. I wasn’t sure yet, but my head was spinning with options I wanted to discuss with Sofiane. Nevertheless, I wanted Lucas and Eliott to get a move on a little bit, so we wouldn’t be minutes from December with no song in sight. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

We did get a move on, a little bit. Lucas mostly just showed off with all the instruments and such he could play. We went into the studio and messed around a bunch, Alexia cheering us on. 

**Alexia Martineau (producer,** **_Fifteen Minutes of Fame_ ** **,** **_Le Premier_ ** **,** **_Minute by Minute_ ** **,** **_Polaris_ ** **):**

Lucas and Eliott were a match made in either heaven or hell. I hadn’t decided yet. I also knew a little bit more about Eliott’s feelings for Lucas than he thought I did, so I saw things the others didn’t. As far as I knew, Lucas was straight, so I didn’t say anything to Eliott or encourage them in that direction in any way, but I saw the subtleties most people wouldn’t. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I had so much creative energy flowing through me that, frankly, wasn’t being used, so as much as I just wanted to fuck around with Eliott doing nothing every day, I knew it was probably time to take things seriously. It was summer already, it would be a year since our album had been released in a few months, and almost two since… you know. 

**Manon Demissy:**

One year hadn’t gone well. I was worried about two years. Eliott seemed to be a really positive influence on him, and though it annoyed me a little how inseparable the two of them were, I figured it was for the best. He hadn’t gone out or been up all night in months, which was a really good thing. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I kept a countdown in my head even though I didn’t mean to. How can you forget something like that, really? I was always aware of it, even in the middle of October, or January. I still had time, but as June neared on July, I was back in my head again.

**Eliott Demaury:**

My birthday was at the end of June, and Idriss and I usually celebrated together along with our friendship anniversary, but he would be out of town working on a new movie, and I didn’t want to be alone, so I asked Lucas to do something with me.

He was acting kind of weird when I asked, so I made sure to point out that it wasn’t a date or anything, but that didn’t phase him, so I didn’t know what else to say.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I knew I could have told him why I was freaking out, but I didn’t know if that would stop me freaking out. 

I didn’t spend his birthday with him, and I still feel like shit about it to this day. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I don’t blame Lucas at all, but I was just feeling really alone, and I did something stupid.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Eliott showed up at our place high as a fucking kite one night crying about something I couldn’t distinguish. Lucas was over with Manon and the girls doing whatever he did with them, and I figured that was who Eliott was looking for, but when I said so, Eliott wouldn’t let me go get him.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I don’t remember much of that night, but I do remember that all of a sudden I knew I didn’t want Lucas to see me like that, I didn’t want him to have another reason to worry. 

**Basile Savary:**

I was at our place with Maria when Eliott came over. I could hear him talking to Arthur, but I couldn’t make out what was being said, so I decided to go check and make sure everything was all right. It was not. 

I’d dabbled with a few substances at that point, but I’d never gone to Lucas’ level, and Eliott was at Lucas’ level. He was a mess too, he looked like the saddest person I’d ever seen. It was heartbreaking, and as much as I wanted to ignore it and go back to Maria, I knew I couldn’t. I told her I’d pay for a cab for her, but she said she wanted to stay and help if she could, so I let her.

**Arthur Broussard:**

That was the first time I’d ever been thankful for Maria’s presence. She was a nurse, so we let her take over and figure out what he needed. She said we should probably take him to a hospital, just as a precaution, but he refused that adamantly. He said he didn’t want them to lock him up again. 

None of us had any idea what that meant, so I asked Yann to come in and call Idriss and see if he knew what was going on. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I didn’t know Eliott had a history with some of that stuff like Lucas did. Idriss sounded so panicked on the phone that I felt like I was the one who’d made him take whatever he’d taken, though obviously I hadn’t. 

I didn’t know why no one was getting Lucas from next door, but every time I mentioned it Arthur and Basile just gave me a warning look and continued fussing over Eliott.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Eventually, he fell asleep. We had to make sure it was sleep and not some sort of coma, which Maria helped with because I had no clue, but we obviously still had to check on him a million times once we laid him on the couch. We put a backpack stuffed with laundry on his back so he wouldn’t flip over, though the couch didn’t really leave room for it anyway, and we all took shifts making sure he was just sleeping. If Eliott fucking Demaury died on our watch… I don’t even want to think about what would have happened. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wasn’t even depressed, I was just lonely and thought I still had the same tolerance I had before. I forgot that my meds would influence whatever I was taking, and I forgot I wasn’t supposed to mix my meds with alcohol in the first place. I didn’t overdose, but it was probably a near thing. 

Mostly, I felt so stupid. I knew Idriss was going to find out, and Sofiane, and I didn’t want to see the looks on their faces when I let them down again. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I stayed over at the girls place that night, because I’d decided to talk to Manon about what was bothering me, or some of it at least. Our relationship had been somewhat on the rocks as of late, and I hated that. By the time we fell asleep, I felt like we were finally back in a good place. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Lucas was freaking out about the two year anniversary, and I didn’t blame him. I was too. I was just glad he told me about it. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

To say I was surprised to see Eliott on our couch the next morning would be an understatement. He’d told me he was going to do something with Sofiane, since I couldn’t. Once the boys filled me in on what happened, I immediately emptied the contents of my stomach into the toilet. I felt responsible, even though I knew deep down no one was to blame. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

When I woke up, I was confused. Maria was sitting next to me, and I had no idea who she was, I hadn’t met her before, and it took me a minute to understand  _ where  _ I was. There are still memory gaps, but I filled in the blanks through deductive reasoning, and the confusion turned to shame.

**Basile Savary:**

I got him some water right when he woke up, and I warned him that Lucas was home. He didn’t even remember that Lucas hadn’t been home the night before, and asked why he was at our place at all. I didn’t really know what to say, because I didn’t have an answer myself. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I was with Lucas in the bathroom when Eliott woke up. I didn’t know why Lucas was throwing up, but once he heard Eliott talking to Baz in the living room, he immediately stopped, flushed the toilet, washed his hands and face quickly, then stormed into the living room, grabbing Eliott by the hand and pulling him outside. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I felt really sick, but I wasn’t going to tell Lucas that, not when he looked so furious.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I’d never been on that side of it before, and I felt horrible for all the shit I’d put my friends through the year before.

**Eliott Demaury:**

He said that if I ever did something so stupid again, he’d kill me, then said that, no, he wouldn’t kill me, because an Eliott-less world was a world devoid of sunshine, but he’d attach himself to me and never let go. 

Truthfully, even then, I didn’t see that as much of a punishment, but I understood that he was serious, so I didn’t dare joke.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I had to ask him, if he’d done it because he meant to not wake up. I had to ask, because I couldn’t bear it if the answer was yes, but I wanted to do for him what I couldn’t for my mother. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

It hadn’t occurred to me that he’d have thought that, and I assured him a million times over that wasn’t my intention. My intention had been to get fucked up and try to have some fun, but getting fucked up wasn’t fun to me any more.

That was when he pulled me into a hug, not unlike the one we’d shared on  _ my _ doorstep, and told me that he was sorry for not being there with me. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

He tried to assure me that it wasn’t my fault, but I didn’t want to hear it at the time. I just wanted him to know that I’d been selfish and lost in my own head, and I was sorry for that, sorry for how it might have affected him. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I told him I forgave him, because that was what he needed to hear, and I’d have forgiven him even if he’d killed me himself. Maybe that wasn’t a healthy way of thinking, but I couldn’t think of Lucas in any light but positive at that point in my life, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Idriss put me on house arrest after that, with Imane and Sofiane alternating as my jailers while he was gone. I took my punishment in stride, and I apologized profusely for any pain I’d caused him with my actions. He seemed surprised, which made me feel like a bad person, because I realized that I didn’t know if I’d ever properly apologized for any of the ways I’d made his life hell before. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I didn’t need an apology from him, but the fact that he was truly remorseful rather than flippant about it made me think that he’d realized the severity of it all. That he was growing up, bit by bit. Twenty two wasn’t too late, his brain wasn’t even fully developed yet. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Imane let it slip that Lucas’ birthday was on the eleventh of July, but that July was a hard month for him, so I should cut him some slack if he was shifty or unavailable. I assumed it had something to do with his mom, from what he’d confided in me. 

If I couldn’t absorb his pain, maybe I could lessen it, I thought, so I went out of my way to create the best day of distraction I could for his birthday, full of surprises. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Eliott told me this whole plan he had for Lucas’ birthday, and I was kind of pissed, because birthdays had always been between the two of us. But I wasn’t going to make Lucas choose between Eliott and me, mostly because I was afraid of the answer. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

The rest of the band treated me differently after my birthday fiasco. I understand why, I guess, but it hurt a little bit. I wanted them to know that as much as that was a part of me, it was a part I was working on growing and learning from, and not falling back into. Surprisingly, Daphné was the only one who treated me exactly the same. We got a little bit closer because of it, because she was the only one who could stand to be alone with me.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Just because I’d had bad experiences with someone who struggled with substance abuse, it didn’t mean I was going to take it out on Eliott. I didn’t even know if he struggled with that. For all I knew, he’d accidentally gotten too high one time and now everyone was ostracizing him when they should have been helping him move on and heal.

Plus, I could tell how Lucas still felt about him, and I was rooting for the two of them to make it. Sue me, I wanted something to balance out the het hormones raging through our band at the time, and I wasn’t getting any action at the moment. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

On my birthday, Eliott took me rollerblading.

That wasn’t all, but that was what we started with. We rollerbladed around LA, which was potentially hazardous, especially because Eliott was accident prone, but we only stopped to grab lunch at a restaurant that was way too expensive. I mean, I had some money at that point but it wasn’t anything crazy, and I kept forgetting Eliott had been rich his whole life.

It was so worth it though, that food was some of the best I’ve ever had. 

After lunch, we went to the beach, which kind of surprised me, because neither of us were beach people, but I figured why not.

All of our friends were there, on a little secluded part of the beach. They’d brought a radio that kept fuzzing in and out of signal, and there was a table set up with various snacks. We stayed there all night, dancing, laughing, and just having fun. 

It was the best birthday I’d ever had. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Eliott clearly knew Lucas, because Lucas looked like he was on cloud nine all day and night. It was much better than what I would have planned, which annoyed me. It shouldn’t have annoyed me, but I was young and petty and Lucas was my brother and I hated the idea that he’d like anyone better than me. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

They were being so fucking gay, and that’s coming from  _ me _ . 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Lucas acted totally different around Eliott than he did around the rest of us. He was always so soft and giggly with these wide fucking bambi eyes and I had to resist the urge to knock him upside the head to make sure he hadn’t been possessed.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

When I talked to Lucas that night, danced with him, he seemed genuinely happy. I didn’t say anything about it, because I didn’t want him to freak out about it, but I was happy to see it. I slept a little easier, knowing that none of them were acting out for once.

**Emma Borgès:**

Yann and I snuck away to fuck at one point but I don’t think anyone noticed. We’d gotten into a good groove, and it was  _ good. _

I liked hanging out with Eliott too, he always made me feel light and happy. I think he had that effect on most people. We hadn’t hung out much since the incident a few weeks beforehand, but I’d been trying to show him that I didn’t hold that against him, that we all made mistakes. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Idriss was back by then, and when Eliott had told him what he wanted to do for Lucas’ party he almost hadn’t let him. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I was just worried. But, I knew it would mean a lot to both of them, so I helped Eliott plan everything, and I made sure there was no alcohol or other substances on the beach with us. Eliott still smoked his cigarettes all the time, but I’d allow him that vice.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

One of Eliott’s songs came on the radio while we were out there, and I think that was the first time he’d heard one on the radio, because he looked like his soul had left his body. Everyone was screaming and freaking out and he was just standing there like he didn’t believe it.

_ (Lucas smiles) _

That was the perfect birthday present for me, I think. Seeing his smile when he came back into himself and realized what was happening. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

It was “Sign of the Times”, the one they played on the radio. I was surprised, I hadn’t thought that one would make the cut, but I was happier than I even knew what to do with. Sofiane was too, he and Alexia and Lucas gave me a giant bear hug, even though we were supposed to be celebrating Lucas.

Lucas started singing along with the radio, an impromptu karaoke of sorts, and though I was initially pissed he sang it so much better than I did, I eventually joined in.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Sofiane and I locked eyes at the exact same moment. We’d heard Lucas sing, we’d heard Eliott sing, and we’d set them up to record a song together, but we’d never actually heard them sing together yet.

**Alexia Martineau:**

Holy shit. That’s all anyone was thinking.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Lucas and I had pretty complementary voices, but Eliott and Lucas were something else. I couldn’t deny it, jealous as I was, because I knew this would make their song a hit and give me less time to shine in the band. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I wondered if they’d worked on singing together at all, or if it really just came that naturally. It was stunning. If Charles had been there, even he would have dropped his jaw to the floor.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas sounded like an angel, I was just doing my best to keep up. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Everyone was all quiet, staring at us. I didn’t get it, but maybe they were just awed by Eliott’s raw talent. I sure was.

I was used to calling Eliott my friend by then, and I’d mostly grown out of the racing hearts and sweating palms, but the way that he’d planned the perfect day and night for me, and how he was looking at me while we sang, a not so friendly seed was planted in my heart again.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I was probably looking at Lucas like I loved him. I don’t think I did, but there were moments sometimes that made me wonder.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I’m so glad I’ve been given the go ahead to gay it up on here, because oh my fucking god. There was no heterosexual explanation for Lucas and Eliott singing to one another. Even I snapped out of my jealousy for a minute due to the sexual tension I was experiencing by proxy.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I not so subtly told Lucas they needed to get to work on the song for real, because if they could do that with one of Eliott’s songs… their song would be something amazing. Something legendary.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Yeah, we buckled down after that and tried to actually write a song. We’d talked a lot about where we wanted to go with the lyrics, how we wanted the production to sound and feel, so we had a good point to jump off from.

**Eliott Demaury:**

We basically wanted to make a song to follow up “Mon Cœur” and “Sign of the Times”. I mean, Lucas didn’t say that in so many words, but those were the last songs on our respective albums, and this was the first the world would be hearing from us after those final words. We wanted to make a song that said everything would be ok, and that no matter what you were going through, you’d make it out all right. It was much more hopeful than Lucas was used to, but he could write hopeful really well when he wanted to. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Weeks started to blend together again because of all the time we spent working. The problem was that we both had too many good ideas, I wanted to use them all. Eliott was good at beautiful lyrics that made you feel like you were drinking moonlight, and I was good at connecting things in new rhythmic ways. We were a good match, maybe too good.

**Manon Demissy:**

I was hyper aware of the two year anniversary, but Lucas' behavior hadn’t been changing for the worse, and he was mostly just working, so I was still cautious, but not as worried.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was really sad, for a few weeks, and especially for the few days on either side of the anniversary, but I just kept mostly to myself. Eliott was there sometimes, Manon was there other times, but I felt strong enough to get through it for the first time since my mom had died. I realized that she wouldn’t have wanted me to throw my life away in her name, because all she’d ever wanted for me was the very best life had to offer. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas got a bit more melancholy for a little bit, then cancelled a couple of our writing sessions, but I think I understood. I would do small things that I thought would make him smile, just in case he needed help getting through it.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott would make me little cartoon strips where he’d draw us as a hedgehog and a raccoon and he’d leave them at the door on days I didn’t feel like answering. They did help, more than he probably thought they did. The anticipation of seeing him after I received one got me through some of the worst days, including the anniversary. I just wanted to continue to live my life, because I liked where I was and the people in it at that point. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Somewhere along the way, my lyric contributions got a little bit more romantic. I didn’t mean for them to, and I was mostly over Lucas anyway, but they did fit the song and the story we were trying to tell.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

There was one day, about two weeks after the anniversary, where we were both at my place but no one was home, not even the girls next door. We were there because I had a piano in my room and there were some melodies I wanted to test out, but the fact that we were alone was just a happy accident. I hated being there and trying to work when everyone else was also there. They wanted to hear what we were working on, and they wanted to give input, and I didn’t want or need that.

In this particular instance, I started playing a melody, and Eliott went all deer in the headlights for no reason. I laughed at him and asked what was wrong, and he told me that I’d just played exactly what had been in his head, not for this song, but for one that he’d never released. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

My sunshine boy was playing “Sunshine Boy”. I miss that song, and I’d always regretted not putting it on my album until then. The thought that anyone would hear it before I heard Lucas’ melody and how perfect it was for the lyrics I’d written was unimaginable. 

I told him to play it again, and repeat it, and I sat next to him on the piano bench and sang the lyrics I’d had in my head for a while. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It wasn’t “Minute by Minute”, it was something for just the two of us, or that’s what it felt like. I realized part of the way through, the language he was using, and I wondered when he’d written this song. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

He told me it was beautiful, and I told him that I’d written it about him. I should have had some self control, I should have kept that to myself, but I couldn’t just not tell him. I didn’t tell him that nearly all the love songs on my album were at least inspired by him too, but it was a near thing.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was dumbfounded. How could I have deserved the nickname sunshine boy when that was so clearly Eliott? Every time I looked at him I felt like I was staring directly into the sun. I told him so, and he just laughed at me. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Things changed between us, after “Sunshine Boy”. I realized that my feelings were still very much there, and he kept looking at me like we’d been pulled into each other’s orbits for a reason, but he didn’t know what that was just yet.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

That song was beautiful, even more so than most of his other songs. It was so full of raw feeling and emotion and I couldn’t comprehend how, in any world, I could have been his muse. He deserved a better muse than me, he was sunshine, I wasn’t. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

He started calling me Sunshine Boy after that, usually just when we were alone, but the rest of them picked up on it after a while. They never questioned it, but soon everyone was calling me Sunshine Boy. It wasn’t the worst nickname to have, though it hadn’t been meant for me.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I wasn’t in love with him or anything, but we weren’t just friends, at least on my end. But he never made a move, so I didn’t bring it up.

**Alexia Martineau:**

I hated being in the studio with them because the sexual tension was too much for me sometimes. It was so much better when the whole band was there. Eliott and Lucas had done a rough production run of “Minute by Minute”, and now everyone was joining in to make it magic. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I knew Lucas would write it with a great guitar melody, and I was still pleasantly surprised. Baz and I played off one another better than we ever had in that song.

**Basile Savary:**

My mind was so preoccupied with Maria at that point that I just did what I was asked and ignored the rest. I snapped out of that by the time we started working on the full album, but I didn’t really think Eliott and Lucas’ song concerned me that much. 

**Emma Borgès:**

With Lucas at least somewhat in charge, the keys were always sublime, so I couldn’t complain. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I tried not to read into the lyrics too much, but since Lucas wouldn’t tell me what exactly the song was about, I had to. In some ways, it was about love, in others about family, friendship, and freedom. A great word to describe it would be exhilarating, if that makes sense. I loved the song, don’t get me wrong, I just wanted to know who it was coming from and why. Minute by minute as a concept was obviously very important to one of them, if not both. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I started freaking out a little bit while we were making that song, because my other ear, the one that could hear, wasn’t doing its job very well. Lucas would yell at me, Alexia looked frustrated, and I was terrified. I loved what I did, and I wasn’t willing to give it up, but the sad reality was that if I couldn’t hear I might have to. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

There wasn’t much room for me on the song, at least not in the way I wanted there to be, so I started writing my own songs again, determined to have at least one on the album. None of those ones made it, and none of those will ever see the light of day because they were terrible, but I’d never have gotten better if I hadn’t started somewhere. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

Lucas and Eliott stayed late with me most nights, trying to get the production just right. I could tell Eliott just stayed because Lucas did, but he got more into it by the end. Once we nailed the final production, and I played the song in full, I think we all had an out of body experience. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Sofiane and I were together when Alexia called me from the studio yelling about how they were geniuses and she deserved a pay raise. I asked if it could wait until tomorrow and she said no, even though it was three in the morning. 

She was right. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I was at Imane’s at three because her place was closer to the studio than mine, and we’d planned to carpool. It was easier to stay over, and I stayed on the couch. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Imane and Sofiane showed up together, which I thought was quite interesting. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

The song was a perfect blend of Eliott and Lucas, and it was exactly what the music world needed. There were plenty of great songs being released, but this one wasn’t just great, it was a classic in the making. People would be talking about it for a hundred years.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I immediately began planning for a music video. I didn’t know if we should go simple or play with a concept, but I called a band meeting for the next morning to figure it out. Alexia was welcome too, because her creativity was never something to overlook.

**Manon Demissy:**

It was a hard song to pin down, in terms of conceptual visual framework. That was never my strong suit anyways, so I mostly listened while everyone discussed. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I thought it sounded like a story about two soulmates finding their place in the world and in each other. I also thought I knew who exactly those soulmates were, but I didn’t think they did, so I kept my mouth shut. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I liked Daphné’s soulmate idea, sort of a Romeo and Juliet inspired video is what I had in mind when she said that. Their story would have ended so much better if they took things minute by minute, let me tell you. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t like where it was going, because I didn’t want the video to be focused on romance. I thought I’d played that aspect of the song way down, but apparently not. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

There was only one romantic angle I wanted to pursue, but I couldn’t say anything about it. 

**Yann Cazas:**

The minute Emma said Romeo and Juliet, everyone was on board. Except Lucas, he seemed very against the idea, but it was eleven to one, so he didn’t get to win this time.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I did love Romeo and Juliet, the story was one of my favorites even when I was too young to understand it fully. I only wish the Baz Luhrmann film had been out at the time we recorded that song, we would have had so much more inspiration to draw from.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Star crossed lovers was a beautiful theme, I thought, even though the song wasn’t explicitly romantic. I think it could have been interpreted a lot of different ways. The only issue was how we’d generate a narrative for the music video with both Lucas and Eliott as the leads, because they were both ‘Romeos’.

I will reiterate now that it was 1982 and I will admit that I had a very heterosexist view on romance because I’d never really learned about or experienced otherwise. I didn’t know Daphné was gay, and I definitely didn’t know Lucas was. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I mean, the obvious choices for the leads were Lucas and Manon, but that would have been weird considering they were siblings in every way but biology, and no one wanted that, so we thought maybe Eliott and Manon could play opposite one another.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I casually mentioned that I didn’t necessarily have to play opposite a girl, if that wasn’t what the narrative required, and I think everyone’s jaws dropped. I wasn’t even thinking about it as ‘coming out’, I just wanted to see if Lucas wanted the same thing as me. His eyes said that he did, but he was quiet, didn’t say a word to confirm or deny. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

A lot of things made a lot more sense to me, though I don’t know if anyone else caught on.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Baz and Arthur looked at me like I was the authority on human sexuality, but I just smiled at Eliott encouragingly. I was a little envious of him, for saying it so casually, but I still wasn’t ready to come out, particularly to Imane. I didn’t want her to kick me out of the band or replace me.

**Basile Savary:**

No one really knew what to say. I thought it was cool that Eliott was gay, or so I thought initially, but I wasn’t sure if it would help our album sales to flaunt that in a music video. I feel shitty for thinking that way, even though it was years ago, but that was what it was like.

**Alexia Martineau:**

I was the one who said something. I let him off the hook without invalidating what he said. I said that I supported the Manon and Eliott idea because fans were really starting to respond to her, and pairing her with Eliott would help both of their images. I also suggested Lucas and Daphné as a pair to mirror them, since Lucas also had vocals on the song. I thought we could have two running narratives throughout the music video, and the others would fill in the rest of the roles.

Everyone agreed immediately, and the meeting was over. Sofiane went to talk to Eliott right away, and I grabbed Lucas and Daphné to make sure they were ok with what I’d proposed. I didn’t know if Lucas knew that he was the one Eliott was always singing about, and I didn’t want to presume anything, though it seemed fairly obvious to me, and Daphné never talked about her dating life, so I just wanted to make sure she was comfortable playing a role for the video.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Alexia had told us all that she was bisexual, so I didn’t have hesitation confiding in her what some of the others already knew. I told her that I wouldn’t have a problem with the video, but that I also had no interest in Lucas or any other men.

**Alexia Martineau:**

I had not expected Daphné to tell me she was a lesbian, but damn was I happy she did. Finally, one of my girl friends was not heterosexual. I loved Daph, and we hung out together a lot, so I was excited to bond over this too.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Not sure why I was overcome with the urge to relate, but I came out to Alexia then too. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

Even though I’d suspected Lucas’ feelings for Eliott might have run deeper than he let on, I never expected him to come out to me right then and there, just like Daphné. Daphné looked surprised too.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I think I started laughing, because the fact that Lucas and I were going to be each other’s Romeo and Juliet in the video was kind of hilarious to me. At least we looked the part. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

When Daphné started laughing, I couldn’t help but join in. Laughing distracted me from being scared about what I’d just told Alexia and whatever the hell was going on with my feelings for Eliott. I didn’t know if I liked him again or I thought I was just gay and spiraling. 

Daphné took the two of us to a gay bar that night. I told her that I wasn’t sure what I was ready for that, but she promised she’d be with me the whole time, she just wanted me to see the side of this community that I hadn’t yet. She didn’t say that she took me there to help me accept myself more, but I inferred as much. She was probably right. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I wanted to invite Eliott, but Daphné told me to refrain from doing so. I think she knew more about Lucas’ situation than she let on, so I accepted it without argument. We did invite Mika, though. 

**Mika Dolleron (owner, Under the Sun):**

When I received an invite to go to a gay bar with Alexia, Daphné, and Lucas, how could I have said no? I was a bit confused, because I didn’t know that Lucas and Daphné partook in that side of human sexuality, but I was all in.

I met Camille there that night.

_ (Mika smiles) _

He’s my husband now, I think I mentioned that before, but it’s kind of thanks to Lucas that I met him.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Um, Camille tried to ask me where the bathrooms were, but it was really loud so I just stared at him, then he tried to ask again in sign language, which I didn’t know at that point, so I thought he was asking me to have sex with him. 

I freaked out, ran away, told Mika what happened, had Mika laugh at me, and then was found by Camille, who looked confused, but his face lit up when he saw Mika. I suppose the rest is history.

**Mika Dolleron:**

That’s our favorite story. Not only is it how we met, but it’s also very embarrassing for Lucas, and he deserves to endure a couple embarrassing stories. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Alexia ditched us all right away for some girl who’d come with Camille. Good for her, I guess. I was babysitting Lucas, but I probably wouldn’t have tried to find someone to hook up with anyway. I was harboring an embarrassing crush that I wasn’t totally ready to talk about yet with anyone. And I knew Lucas felt mostly the same about his feelings for Eliott, so we were a good match for the night. 

The one time I left him alone was to use the bathroom, and that was when the whole Camille fiasco happened. I’m still mad I didn’t witness it firsthand. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t really consider the fact that I was kind of famous now, and that some people might recognize me there. But they did, and I freaked out. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I wasn’t used to people recognizing me yet, so I hadn’t thought to be worried about Lucas. I felt so bad for bringing him, but it wasn’t like I’d forced him to come. And just because one person recognized him, it didn’t necessarily mean anything. Basile was one of the most heterosexual dudes I knew, and we’d frequented many gay bars and clubs together. 

Mika was with Camille, and Alexia was god knows where, so Lucas and I left alone, and I took him somewhere to talk him through whatever he was feeling. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It was barely anything, someone just said,  _ hey, aren’t you in that band? _ Maybe they weren’t talking about my band, but they probably were. Nothing ever came of it, but it panicked me to think that I’d come close to being outed before I was even ready to admit it to some of my closest friends. Manon didn’t even know. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas told me he’d gone to a gay bar, and I was pretty surprised. I asked who he went with, and he said Mika and Alexia, so at least he wasn’t alone.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t know how many people Daphné wanted to be out to, but I knew that Alexia and Mika were out to everyone in our circle and beyond. I didn’t want to make a big deal of the fact that I’d gone, but I wanted Eliott to know for some reason. I could have hooked up with someone, but the prospect had terrified me. I didn’t know why I hadn’t felt that way when Eliott kissed me at the holiday party.

**Eliott Demaury:**

He told me he hadn’t met anyone there, and I wasn’t entirely sure why he was telling me. I was happy, in a selfish way, but I knew that he’d probably have been better off finding someone else. I wanted Lucas in my life forever, and if that meant we had to be friends, I’d do that. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Daphné and Lucas were all of a sudden best friends after they went out together one night. I mean, I’d noticed that they were a little bit closer than before, but it wasn’t as drastic as after they went out together. I sort of wondered if there was something going on between them at first.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I hired Alexia to direct the music video, because she seemed like the right person to manage this lot, and Eliott actually had a lot of good input. We made more of a story than the song suggested, but Lucas and Eliott came up with it all mostly on their own, so they couldn’t have been too mad about the interpretation.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

If love was what sold to consumers, sure, I’d be in love with Daphné.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Manon was a natural, I felt like I could barely keep up.

**Manon Demissy:**

I was surprised by how much I loved shooting the video. It just reminded me of how much I loved the idea of becoming other people, even if just for a song. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Lucas and Manon were Romeo, Eliott and I were Juliet. It was kind of fitting, based on our personalities, I thought. I got to wear the most gorgeous dress, even prettier than the one I wore for the Fifteen Minutes album shoot. I didn’t even know they made dresses like that, I didn’t know why I was deemed worthy to wear one.

It had a celestial theme, because the story of Romeo and Juliet is about a pair of star crossed lovers, and honestly, it felt a little bit too on the nose at times. Lucas consistently rebuked the idea that he had feelings for Eliott, but I think that if the eighties hadn’t been the eighties and the idea of loving freely wasn’t so terrifying, he might have let his heart guide him a little bit more. 

My dress was a pale cream color, pretty sheer except for the areas it needed to be covered. There was a deep v and a tight waist and a skirt that flowed beautifully, so much tulle that I felt like a cross between a ballerina and Cinderella. The whole fabric was covered in various sized gold stars, sparkly as can be. They were heavily concentrated on the bodice and the top of the skirt, but got more sporadic as you looked further down the skirt. Real princess shit. 

Lucas almost looked like Prince Charming, but way more high fashion.

_ (Daphné laughs) _

His outfit was less ethereal, but just as romantic, shades of red combining and making his eyes pop like the oceans they were. His pants were tight because Alexia had a thing for his ass, and they had small red rhinestones running down the side seams on the outside, and his shirt looked torn from the renaissance, ruffled and poofy in all the right places. He  _ was _ Romeo, just not mine.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas looked… I don’t even know how to describe it. In another world, we were Romeo and Juliet, and Manon and Daphné weren’t a part of it at all. As a ‘Capulet’, I had a similar vibe to Daphné, clothes colored in creams and golds. I had a cape of sorts connected to the top of my shoulders, it was covered in shining stars and it gave the illusion of a gown in some ways, more based in femininity than masculinity. There was a lot of discussion about whether it was the right move, because Juliet didn’t have to be inherently feminine, but we decided that it would be a cool juxtaposition, and would break down some of the strictly gendered barriers so prevalent in society. 

Manon did the same, but in the opposite direction. She had on a finely tailored suit, red but for the white shirt she wore underneath and the cream colored rose on her lapel. She also had her signature red lipstick and a pair of black high heels. Her tuxedo jacket was cropped in the front with long coattails in the back, and she had a black bowtie, hair cascading down in waves.

**Manon Demissy:**

My hair was longer by the time we shot that video, I’d let it grow for a while and it was closer to where Daphné’s was, still a dark, rich brown. That suit was everything to me though. I didn’t mind dresses and dressing up, but there was something so empowering to me about being there dressed like that. It’s why I started wearing suits a lot on tour and such, they made me feel less constricted into the box society wanted me in.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Lallemissy twins looked hot as hell, we nailed the Romeo look. Eliott and Daphné… I don’t really have words because they both looked like literal angels on earth. Eliott’s long, starry cape appeared in many of my dreams after that day. He looked beautiful, and I wanted so desperately to flip the story on its head and decide that he was my Juliet, and I was his Romeo.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Manon looked more gorgeous than I’d ever seen anyone look in my life. I wanted her to come to my balcony and sweep me away. As soon as I had that thought, I smothered it, because that was very much  _ not _ a good idea to go thinking like that at all times, but part of me wished Eliott and I could swap Romeos. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Eliott was more beautiful than I’d ever seen him, if that was even possible, but Daphné was a goddess walking on earth. Her blonde hair and shining makeup only made her look more ethereal with each passing minute, it was a wonder everyone didn’t pass out in awe when they looked at her. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I went  _ in _ on the makeup. I’d been practicing a lot of things and wanted to try them out, so our squad was the perfect test group. Emma, Baz, Arthur, and Yann all had extravagant dress and makeup too, each of them playing a role in the overarching narrative we were going for, but I spent the most time on the other four. 

Lucas was first, I think I caked him in so much glitter he’s still finding it to this day, but it was all intentional, still had that rockstar edge with the romance of the theme. It was mostly just glitter around his eyes and on his temples and cheekbones, eyes rimmed with smudged black eyeliner as a finishing touch. His hair had a few sprinkles of glitter too, for good measure.

Manon had her red lips, obviously, and a few silver glitter tears added to the mix for emphasis and unity. Lucas’ glitter was silver too. 

Eliott and Daphné had gold glitter. His glitter was in his eyebrows and on his lips, cheekbones highlighted with a pale, moonlight colored glow, eyes rimmed in a mauvey red, making the blues and grays of his irises stand out starkly. 

Daphné had more gold foil than gold glitter, in the same places as Lucas, mostly on her temples and the tops of her cheekbones. Her eyes were shadowed in the same color as Eliott’s eyeliner, more saturated as it got closer into her eyes, each with a gold line drawn from her eyebrow down her lid and then again about halfway down her cheeks. She had a crown that looked like it was made of stars, and Eliott probably would have had one too if we hadn’t been worried about messing up his artfully messy hair. 

They looked so, so cool. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Honestly, I felt the most myself I’d ever been. I hadn’t really been one to experiment with different styles of dress and I knew next to nothing about makeup, but the “Minute by Minute” video changed my perspective on style a lot. I owe my later risks with fashion to Alexia, but I owe a lot of things to her, so we’ll just add it to the tally.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t see why this was a normal thing for girls, but not for guys. I felt beautiful and confident dressed as a poor man’s Romeo, and I didn’t think there was a problem with that. It definitely didn’t help some of the rumors about my sexuality, that sometimes I experimented in different styles, but it really didn’t have anything to do with sexuality for me. I wasn’t trying to look one way or another, I was just trying to be my best self, whoever that was at any given time. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I thought it was ridiculous, but I liked this kind of ridiculousness. I didn’t like the kind of ridiculousness that told me I should wear deeper cut shirts on tour, because that was what the audiences wanted to see anyway, I liked wearing a suit and a shirt buttoned up as high as it could go and feeling like hot shit. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

It was empowering, being a part of that group at that time. I was probably the one adhering to societal roles the most, but I felt like it was my choice, and that took away any negatives to the fact that I was a girly girl dressed as a girly girl. Just because I preferred ball gowns, didn’t make me any less strong, or independent, or powerful.

**Emma Borgès:**

I wasn’t mad that I was relegated to the background of that particular video. I think they told me I was ‘Mercutio’, or something, but to be honest I didn’t know what that meant. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I was the Benvolio of the story, or so I’d been told. I remembered studying Romeo and Juliet in school, but all that I remembered was that I was a Montague, so that meant I was mostly with Lucas and Manon. Our music video had a happy ending, it didn’t involve all the death and such, so I played my part and stole some moments with Emma while no one was paying us any attention. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I was Tybalt, I had on the same colors as Eliott and Daphné, which meant I was on that side, and I had Baz with me.

**Basile Savary:**

I think I was the nurse? Not sure if I should have been mad about that or not, but labels didn’t really matter aside from the main four. Each of us in the background had one of the mains to ‘help out’, or be connected to in the story we were telling with the video. Manon and Emma were together, Yann and Lucas were together, Daph Bean and I were together, and Arthur and Eliott were together. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Of course I was second to him. I wasn’t bothered at the time, because it made sense, but I have a right to be mad now. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I gave Imane and Sofiane cameos in the video, even though they didn’t want to be in it. Sofiane was the Friar, and I wanted Imane to be the ‘chorus’ or sorts, like the narrator, but instead she agreed to be in the background of the big ending scene. I called that a win. 

**Yann Cazas:**

That video took  _ forever _ to shoot.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I was so thankful for Idriss’ influence and connections, because we wouldn’t have been able to procure the set we did without him. I’m not sure what all the props and decorations were for, but it worked really well to transform our set into Verona. We even decorated the instruments, even though I wasn’t sure if we’d use instrumental shots or not. The editing wasn’t up to me, all of that went over my head. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Imane let Alexia do her makeup to fit in with the crowd of extras we’d gotten for the final scene, and I’d never seen anyone more beautiful in my life. Imane looked beautiful all the time, and she didn’t need makeup by any means, but she was truly glowing that day, and I’ll remember how I felt that day for as long as I live. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Taking off the makeup after the day was awful. There was so. Much. Glitter. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I didn’t know what the end result would be yet, but I knew that I was really proud of what we’d done. On the track, we added me to some of the backing vocals along with Daphné, so our place in the narrative didn’t seem inorganic. I didn’t think it would have anyway, but I was kind of excited to have a chance to sing. I wasn’t as good as Lucas, Eliott, or Daphné by any means, but I was alright. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I had no idea Manon could sing like that. It gave me ideas, ideas that didn’t necessarily include Lucas, but that I thought were worth pursuing. I wanted at least one song on the next album, and I’d fight for it if necessary. I just had to get Manon on my side. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

It felt weird, now that the song was done. I didn’t really have a reason to stick around. Yeah, I was friends with all of them, but they had to start writing their album, and I wasn’t a part of that. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I kind of forgot that Eliott wasn’t a part of the band. It hadn’t hit me until then that we were done with one another, at least professionally. I didn’t know if he’d still be able to be with me everyday anymore, and that hit me like a ton of bricks. 

That was when I wrote “Can I Call You Tonight?”. 

The chorus of that song, still to this day, makes me feel a whole lot of things. It was such an unsure time of my life, even though in some ways it was the surest I’d ever been. I’d call Eliott every night, just to hear his voice, and even though I probably, in the back of my mind, knew that the way I felt for him wasn’t platonic, those nighttime phone calls were what really made me evaluate my feelings. All he had to do was say ‘hello’, and suddenly I was no longer alone in the world.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Eliott and Lucas’ late night phone calls were the most annoying thing in the world. Some of us liked to sleep. Clearly, Eliott and Lucas are not included in ‘some of us’.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I tried writing some of my own songs, but I felt disheartened about almost all of them. Now that “Minute by Minute” was over, so was my career again, unless somehow Charles became unconvinced that I was crazy. 

The only thing I looked forward to was Lucas’ voice on the phone answering with, “Well hello, Sunshine Boy,” every night.

**Manon Demissy:**

Lucas was writing a bit, but not that much. First album Lucas would have written twenty five songs by now, and wouldn’t have stopped. We had “Lovers in the Moonlight” and “Minute by Minute”, and, from what I could distinguish, about two others in process, but he seemed like he was being more thoughtful about the process, making sure every word counted. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Since Lucas seemed to have hit a bit of writer’s block, I decided to take advantage of it. I told Manon I wanted to write a song with her for the next album, and she pretty much turned me down without a second thought. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I didn’t know why she was coming to me, if she wanted to write a song, she should have gone to Lucas.

**Basile Savary:**

We were in a limbo again, but I didn’t mind, because that meant I got to spend more time with Maria.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I got my hearing checked out in the meantime, I only told Manon. She told me to tell everyone else, but I didn’t want to yet, so she kept my secret. They told me to stay away from loud noises, that it was very possible I’d go deaf in my right ear as well, and I think I had a panic attack right after I left the building. 

Stay away from loud noises? That wasn’t possible. I didn’t want to go fully deaf, but I didn’t want to give up my whole life either.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I talked to Imane about writing a song for the next album, because Manon had blown me off and I wasn’t asking Lucas for permission, and while she didn’t say no, she did tell me we’d have to talk to Charles. I thought that was stupid, that we should have creative control over what music we made, but she told me there were some thing I just didn’t understand about the business. I supposed that was true, but it didn’t mean I had to like it. 

Of course, Charles was  _ very _ busy, so we couldn’t schedule anything until after the video and single release. I hoped that would bode in my favor, because I, at least visually, had a pretty big role in that song.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I wanted to give Daphné a chance. I felt we’d underutilized her talents on the first album, but I also knew we had a brand to maintain. With everything Sofiane had told me about Eliott’s album, and what I’d heard from Shame, I knew Charles wasn’t going to have the same leniency he did with our first album, and I knew I couldn’t make that decision for everyone, as much as I wanted to say yes. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I asked Idriss about asking Imane out, not because I needed his permission, but because I didn’t want him to feel like I was doing something behind his back. I really liked her, and I didn’t want to have to hide anything from anyone about how I felt. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Imane’s love life was Imane’s love life, I had no say in it. If I claimed I did, I’m sure she would have kicked me in the balls so hard I could never have children. Sofiane was one of my best friends, and I thought that Imane might have liked him a lot too. The only thing I was worried about was the religious aspect. I knew Sofiane no longer practiced religion, but I didn’t know if Imane knew that. 

My religious identity is still a big part of who I am, but Imane was always more deeply connected to our faith than I was. I admired her for it, and I knew Sofiane did too, but I worried about what difference it might make for her if he didn’t have that same connection. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I knew about Sofiane’s feelings for me, but I couldn’t have time for that with where I was at in life. I didn’t know, at the time, that he wasn’t religious, and yeah, that definitely impacted my relationship with him later, but I was mostly scared, if I’m being honest. 

I was never one for vulnerability, I’m still working on it to this day, and I knew that I wasn’t scared to be vulnerable with Sofiane, which, naturally, terrified me. Manon was the only one that really saw the softer side of Imane Bakhellal, Lucas a little bit too, and selfishly I worried about what vulnerability might do to the persona I’d built up and where it had led me career wise. I didn’t want to not be respected because of one small thing, and I thought it was ridiculous that I had to think about those kinds of things, but I did.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I think I wrote two more songs before our video was slated to be released. Granted, one of them was more scribbly than coherent, but what it grew into ended up being great. The other song, “South”, came to me kind of randomly.

A lot of the music I was working on at the time was centered around love and romance, because those were the feelings I needed to channel into something creative at the time, but “South” struck me one night after a conversation with, of all people, Maria. 

Not sure why we were talking to one another, but I think I mentioned something about my dad, my real dad, in passing, and somehow we got into a deeper discussion about our respective families. Maria didn’t have the easiest go of it either, and some of the same lessons had been drilled into us at a young age. 

I didn’t remember much of my father, but I remembered that he cared more about money than family, and that he would always chide me for the way I carried myself. When I was a kid, I didn’t know what it meant to carry yourself in one way or another, but he’d always say to me, “You want to be a strong man? You walk like this: back straight and chest out, just like a soldier.”

_ (Lucas sings) _

_ Back straight and chest out, just like a soldier. _

That always stuck with me, I don’t know why. Sometimes I’d catch myself repeating it in my head, even just walking down the street. I wrote “South” about my current transition in my life, away from home, from all I’d ever known and loved, to where I was now. Technically, I was more ‘west’, but “South” had a better ring to it. I’d already had some major fuck ups, and they were no ones fault but my own, but it was all part of the process. I had to lose some battles to keep growing.

**Arthur Broussard:**

“South” struck a chord with me, I won’t lie. None of them knew about my family situation, and my family still didn’t know about my current situation, somehow, and the “Back straight and chest out, just like a soldier” line hit me in ways I hadn’t expected it to. Lucas didn’t write about his family or his life before LA very often, but when he did, I always felt it in my core. Our upbringings were different in many ways, but there were some ways we were bonded in more than just the music we made and the friendship we’d worked our way into. 

**Manon Demissy:**

That song felt a lot more personal than a lot of his other ones so far, and I think that was when I got a real sense for what the album was going to be like, and how Lucas had only scratched the surface on his potential. All of us, really. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

The release of “Minute by Minute” came faster than anyone was expecting. I’d seen the full video, because I had to approve it, but I’d kept it from the band because it was  _ that _ good. I knew none of them were going to be disappointed, and I knew it would be a beautiful surprise. Plus, I wanted to see all of their reactions at the same time the whole world was reacting. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I was going to ask out Imane after the video release, and I was so nervous. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas and I had still been talking every night, but we hadn’t seen each other in person in a while. He told me that it was because he was working on writing a lot, which I understood, but I felt such a loss without him as a fixture in my everyday life.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I’d been purposefully keeping myself away from Eliott, because I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to control myself around him any longer. I didn’t believe in love, but Eliott was coming worryingly close to making me. 

**Emma Borgès:**

It would be cool to have new music out in the world again. It would be even cooler to get back to making more and more new music again after that. 

**Manon Demissy:**

We all gathered at Idriss and Eliott’s place, because it was bigger than our places and Imane would never let us go to hers. They were supposed to be airing our video at seven on MTV for the first time, and I was so jittery I could hardly sit still. Charles had asked me to watch the video drop with him, but I told him I’d be watching with the band. I think he was still under the assumption that I had a boyfriend, but I’m not sure if he cared. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I was so nervous. I knew the video was incredible, and I hoped it all went off without a hitch, but I didn’t really know how MTV worked, what if they messed something up? I wasn’t in charge of that aspect of it all, and I hated that. I wanted it to be in my control. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Imane was so stressed, and I knew Sofiane wanted to ask her out, so I told him that it maybe wasn’t the time. I didn’t want either of them to get hurt, and I knew that Imane might unintentionally take out her frustrations on him.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I had full faith in Imane, Alexia, Eliott, and the band’s capabilities, so I wasn’t worried at all. I could see how Imane would be, though, so I heeded Idriss’ warning. At the end of the day, it was a decision I could make for myself, but I was aware that timing was everything. 

**Yann Cazas:**

You’d think Eliott and Lucas just got back from war or something. There was some emotion I couldn’t place in both of their faces when they saw each other, and even though they didn’t cry or leap into each other’s arms, their greetings felt intimate in a raw and deeply emotional way. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I think Lucas was in love with Eliott longer than he realized, but I think he might have realized it that night.

I think Eliott had been in love with Lucas all along, but he’d been aware of it. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

We were all dressed down, but Lucas looked beautiful. He always did, but you know what I mean. A little warning sign went off in my brain, telling me I was in too deep, that I was doing exactly what I’d promised to never do again, but I didn’t care one bit. Lucas wasn’t Camille, he was unlike anyone I’d ever met. 

**Basile Savary:**

Lucas was an entirely different person around Eliott, but I don’t think he realized it. Around us, he was a little bit chaotic, a lot sarcastic and grumpy, went through periods of isolation or intense need for validation and attention with no in between, and he could be really caring underneath it all, but I’d never describe him as soft, smiley, or— I’m not sure if this is the right word— romantic.

I’ll be the first to say that I liked to look at the world through rose colored lenses, and Lucas was mostly the opposite. Except for when Eliott was around. When Eliott was around, his eyes were bright, his smiles were easy, and he was the type of person who wrote love songs and meant them. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott’s smile, how happy he looked to see me… I felt it, deep in my heart and soul. Especially because I knew I was probably looking at him the same way. I stopped lying to myself, there was nothing platonic in the way I looked at him, at us, and I desperately wanted to tell him, but I also desperately wanted for it to remain a secret forever. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I’m here to talk about our band, not Lucas and Eliott, or anyone else. I don’t care if Lucas looked at Eliott like the sun shone out of his asscrack, I wasn’t paying attention to those sort of things. Maybe I should have been, but I had enough to deal with in my own life.

**Alexia Martineau:**

Lucas’ nickname for Eliott had caught on at that point, though I was one of the only ones who knew it was originally Eliott’s nickname for Lucas. I’m not sure Eliott wanted anyone but Lucas to call him Sunshine Boy, I could see it in his face, but we all did anyway. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

The video dropped exactly when it was supposed to, and all of a sudden there we were, on the tv, living out a romantic fantasy that didn’t actually align with any of our interests. It was kind of funny to me, actually, that we all pulled it off so well.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

The video was so good I forgot about Eliott for a second, something I hadn’t really been able to do for a long time. 

_ (Lucas laughs) _

I say that like I’m joking, but it’s true. He was always there, in the corner of my mind, no matter what I was doing. 

**Manon Demissy:**

That video was what put me on a similar level to Lucas, in the eyes of the public. I don’t think I would have become who I did without that video, and I probably owe a lot of that to Eliott too, and I’ve gone back and forth on how I feel about that many times over the years.

The fame was never really a draw for me, I was focused on the music, but there were times I didn’t mind it. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I think I watched Lucas watch the video instead of watching it myself. I knew I’d have other chances to watch and appreciate it, but I didn’t know how many other chances I’d have to watch and appreciate him.

**Yann Cazas:**

I was in more of the video than I expected to be. I mostly thought the four of us in the background would be barely glimpsed every now and again, but we were pretty present. I was proud of that video, and liked the idea of making another one at some point. 

**Basile Savary:**

Surprisingly, I looked kind of hot? We all did, but I’d never really thought I’d be able to pull off that Eliott seductive model thing. In the MXM video, I kind of did. I couldn’t wait for Maria to see it.

**Arthur Broussard:**

My hearing went out while we watched the video. It came back about three quarters of the way through the video, but I was really shaken. What if that happened on stage? What if it didn’t come back? I knew I should have been listening to my doctors, but how could I, really? At the same time, how could I not?

**Imane Bakhellal:**

The video was perfect. It had to be a hit, it just had to be.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I was falling so hard for Imane, it was hard to understand how she didn’t see it. But when I watched her reaction to that video, I agreed with Idriss for a different reason. I didn’t want to make this night about me, I wanted to let her enjoy her success to the highest degree she could.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Reviews came in for a few weeks after the music video and single release, and they were all great. Seven Minutes in Heaven was climbing to the top of the charts with “Minute by Minute” and everyone wanted to see them there, it seemed. Charles was ecstatic, which was unsurprising because of all the money he’d be getting, but at least that meant I had a chance with Daphné and her songwriting.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I begged Manon to come with to the meeting with Charles, because we all knew how much he favored her to the rest of us.

**Manon Demissy:**

I didn’t want to use his affection to our advantage, especially because I still thought we should talk it over with Lucas, but he was preoccupied with whatever he had going on that made him entirely inaccessible to me, so I said sure, why not. If Imane thought it was a good idea, I didn’t see how it wouldn’t be. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

At the meeting, the first thing Charles told us was that Rolling Stone wanted to do a feature on the band and Eliott. It wouldn’t come out until closer to the album release, but they wanted us for the cover. I was shocked, but in a way that had me out of my mind with excitement. That was  _ huge _ . For all of them, especially Eliott. I thought that would also work in our favor with Daphné’s songs, but Charles was nothing if not a piece of work.

**Manon Demissy:**

He barely looked at Daphné when she spoke, first of all. I thought that was quite rude of him, but he apologized when I called him out on it. 

That was the thing with Charles, and why I didn’t always see a lot of the stuff the others saw. Because he liked me, he’d appease me for his own personal gain. He was a manipulative person, and I hope you won’t blame me for being manipulated on many occasions. For all my feminist learnings and the ways I tried to stand up for Imane, Daphné, and Emma on a regular basis, and fight for our right to be and do whatever we wanted, Charles was a bit of a weak point for me for a long time. I’m not proud of it, but I hope you’ll be able to not think any less of me by the time this is done. If you do, I’d understand. I thought less of myself for a long time. 

As far as this meeting was concerned, though, I didn’t let him manipulate me. I had a great distaste for everything that went down. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

He started talking to Manon about the music video, of all things, particularly how she was dressed. He seemed flabbergasted that she’d worn a suit, that she hadn’t looked the part of a princess. She said that she liked wearing suits, and he said that he thought she’d have been beautiful in a skirt or dress.

She told him that she liked wearing a suit better, and that I’d pulled off a dress better than she ever could. I wasn’t prepared for the compliment, and even less prepared for Charles’ response when I asked if we could talk about me writing and performing a song or two for our second album. 

**Manon Demissy:**

He said to her, “Or maybe you can sit there, look pretty, and shut up when I want you to.”

Imane and I were shocked that he said something like that, but neither of us thought it was in our power to call him out. That’s how it was at the time. I did think to myself, after that meeting, that it really shouldn’t have been like that. That was why, when Daphné asked if I wanted to help her with a couple songs again, I agreed. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Charles was an asshole to the nth degree, and I knew that, but I still felt so discouraged after that meeting. I felt like I had nothing worth saying, just because Charles Munier said so. What kind of bullshit is that?

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I told Daphné we’d give her two songs on the album, and if Lucas and the rest of the band had a problem, they could take it up with me. I had no problem telling them off if they questioned her, or me. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I was surprised, actually, that Imane fought for me like she did. We’d never been close, I’d always seen her as about ten levels above me in the game called life, and I honestly never thought she liked me that much, but I really appreciated what she was willing to do for me. It would have been easier for her to just say no and let Lucas take us to the top of the charts on his own. 

I did tell him that I’d be doing two songs for the album, but I think he was so distracted by other things at the time that he didn’t even register what I was saying. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott and I started hanging out a lot again. I knew I should have been hunkering down and writing, but I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired, and Eliott always inspired me. 

Nothing had changed between us, but also, everything had. 

Sometimes he would call me baby, and I wouldn’t say anything about it. I liked it, actually, which is weird, because I kind of grew to hate pet names over the years. I didn’t think much of it all, honestly, I didn’t realize we were practically one kiss away from marriage.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I called him baby by accident one time, because I’d been trying to write some music of my own, and he was always baby in my music because I couldn’t say his name. 

After the first time, it kept happening, and I don’t think either one of us wanted it to stop. He had Sunshine Boy, I had baby.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

The Rolling Stone interview came quickly, and that was when we met Noée. She was a journalist for the magazine, and she’d taken a liking to our group.

**Noée Daucet (journalist, Rolling Stone):**

_ Transcript translated from American Sign Language _

Seven Minutes in Heaven was  _ the _ band of the time, even if they themselves didn’t quite know it yet. Maybe they thought it was weird that a deaf girl was interviewing a band, but just because I couldn’t hear the music they played the way the hearing community could, it didn’t mean I didn’t have my own ways of understanding and appreciating music. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Noée gave me hope without meaning to. She didn’t know, during that interview, about my hearing issues, but her presence made me feel like I could have a place in this world, even if I went completely deaf.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Noée was way cooler than any of us, so sure of herself, and it was kind of intimidating. But as direct as she was, she was also really funny and kind. I think that first interview with her was one of my favorites I’ve ever done. I was actually really nervous, because we’d never done that sort of thing before, but she made the atmosphere comfortable. 

**Noée Daucet:**

I wasn’t going to get anywhere acting like some kind of music snob. I was obviously there for a reason, and even if they weren’t the Beatles, didn’t mean they weren’t also one in a million. 

**Emma Borgès:**

We all interviewed separately, probably because the magazine only really cared about what Lucas had to say, but I kind of liked it. I would have let the others talk over me otherwise. 

**Noée Daucet:**

I was one of the only women in a high position at the magazine at that time, and the process had been brutal, not only as a woman, but also because of my disability. Not many people took me seriously for a long time. I only got the Seven Minutes in Heaven story because they were still only on the rise. “Minute by Minute” was a revelation, but that could have been the best they had to offer. 

Everyone knew Lucas Lallemant, but not many people knew all the others, and they were just as important to the group. I was supposed to interview them as a group, but I didn’t want to have anyone left out, even accidentally.

**Yann Cazas:**

The only problem with Noée interviewing us all separately was that the song really only meant something to Lucas and Eliott. None of the rest of us really knew what exactly it was about. We got the general idea from the lyrics, but aside from that… nothing. I just talked about the video, mostly, and the bassline in the song.

**Noée Daucet:**

The only ones who had anything real to say about the song “Minute by Minute” were Lucas and Eliott, which made sense, because they’d written it. I tried to keep the questions with the rest of them relating more to the path they were embarking on for their next album and what they liked best about the band and all of that. This wasn’t an exposé, it was an exclusive meant to make people root for them. I didn’t need or care for any drama, if they had it. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I told Noée that I’d have two songs on the next album, and how excited I was about that. I  _ was _ excited, an idea had struck me the night before the interview and I had nearly all the lyrics done already. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I had a big place in the band, from an audience’s perspective, but while I was talking to Noée I realized that I didn’t have that big of a place in the band aside from the instrument I played. I was Lucas’ sister, that was it. I just went along with what he said and did, which went against anything I ever wanted to do. I mean, for the most part, Lucas and I just agreed on most things, so I didn’t have reason to argue, but talking to Noée I realized I didn’t want the band to be one person and his backup crew anymore. 

**Noée Daucet:**

I was a little confused by Arthur. I hardly got anything I could use from him, because he kept asking me questions about being deaf. He wasn’t being disrespectful, though, like a lot of other people usually were when they asked questions, so I obliged some of them but mostly tried to steer the conversation back to what he was supposed to be talking about. 

I did give him my number after the interview, though, just in case there was more to his questions than he wanted to let on. 

**Basile Savary:**

My portion of the interview was pretty simple. I liked working with everyone, I liked performing, I liked my role in the band, and I liked where we were going. I didn’t have anything special to add, really. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I think I might have waxed poetic about Lucas’ eyes a bunch? I didn’t mean to, but interviews have never been my strong suit. I was too much of a mess to talk about myself, and I could only talk about the music so much without bringing it back to Lucas. I wasn’t a part of the band, I didn’t have anything to add to that conversation. I was only a part of the interview because of how successful the single had been so far.

Noée asked me what “Minute by Minute” meant, and I said that, in the simplest terms, it meant unconditional love, whether that be platonic, romantic, whatever. It meant the best of times and the worst of times. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I said that “Minute by Minute” was about patience, and finding the light at the end of the tunnel. I’d been afraid of the dark my whole life, I told her, but “Minute by Minute” told me I didn’t have to be. Whatever you were going through, you’d get through it.

It was also intrinsically tied to Eliott for me, but I didn’t say that. I didn’t cite my mom as inspiration either, because I didn’t need the world knowing those details about my life. I preferred to let the music speak for itself, most of all. 

Noée was the one who inspired the song “Scrawny” off our second album, actually, because of that interview.

_ (Lucas laughs) _

I was joking with her a little bit, asking her how she was going to describe me in the interview, like ‘Lucas Lallemant, age twenty, super hot rock god to the stars’ or whatever, and you know what she told me? 

_ “Lucas Lallemant, a twenty year old scrawny motherfucker with a cool hairstyle.” _

I told her that if she didn’t put that in the interview, I’d never talk to her again, and she told me she would only if I wrote a song for her. I think she was joking, because I think she thought I was joking, but I made good on my promise, and so did she.

I mean, that wasn’t all “Scrawny” was about, for the most part it was about the trials and tribulations of newfound fame and the urge to hold on to the past because change was a scary thing, but that chorus goes out to her every single time. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I was surprised the interviews went over so easily. It was probably due to Noée’s professionalism, but I’d take it. We had the cover shoot months down the road, because they were scheduling the story for one of the magazine issues closer to the album release date, which was still almost a year away.

There was a lot of work to be done, so once the interview was over, I told Lucas and Daphné to get to it, and told the rest of the band to be ready to get back to work soon. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

That was when my parents found out I hadn’t been attending school. Our video apparently had even reached the suburban Minnesotan parental crowd, and they realized I was still in the same band they’d told me to be done with. My mom was proud of me, but my dad was pissed. He cut me off and told me I was no longer a part of the family. The phone call where I realized they’d found out was the last time I ever spoke to him. I don’t know to this day if he’s dead or alive. 

My mom and I still had a bit of a relationship, though it was more distant for a couple of years, until she and my dad got divorced. I still feel bad for hiding so much from her, but she’s forgiven me a million times, and that’s all I can ask for. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I’d told Daphné I wanted to work with her, but I only really got serious about it after the interview. She told me about the song she was writing, and I thought it was brilliant. I also thought I had an idea for her second song, but I didn’t want to make her feel like I was trying to tell her what to do. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

All I’d wanted for longer than I’d realized was to be close to Manon in the way she was with Emma or some of the others. I don’t know why it took us longer than the rest to get there, but it was everything when we finally did. Her idea for the second song was genius. We would be telling our own mini story amidst a larger narrative. 

The song I’d written was called “Pretty Girl” and it was basically taken from what Charles said at the meeting, written in a way that seemed complacent and fit with men’s ideas of what women should be, but it was all ironic. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Pretty girl was a feminist song, but so many fucking men didn’t get it.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

That was why we ended up writing “Seashore” together, Manon and I. Emma actually helped too, when she was around. Which she wasn’t, often. Not sure where she was, we all had a theory she had a secret boyfriend but we never got confirmation.

**Emma Borgès:**

I probably wouldn’t have involved myself if “Seashore” hadn’t been what it was. I’d never really concerned myself much with feminist theory, but Manon was my best friend, so I got an earful every now and again. I was a feminist myself, obviously just not in the same way Manon was. She was a fighter, I was more of a sit in the background and cheer her on type of person, but “Seashore” made me want to be a fighter. 

I’ll be honest, I didn’t totally understand “Pretty Girl” at first. I wasn’t at the meeting with Charles, so I didn’t know what he’d said, and to me the song sounded like it was just pandering to whatever idea men had of Daphné, which didn’t seem like her. As long as I’d known her, she’d never given any men any of her time. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I felt comfortable enough, writing “Seashore” with Manon and Emma, to tell them about my sexuality. Yann, Manon, and Emma were the only ones in the band who didn’t know, and even though I knew it wasn’t my responsibility to share with them because other people knew, I wanted them to know. I also hoped it might show Lucas that our friends would be our friends no matter what. 

**Emma Borgès:**

Daphné being a lesbian made so many things make more sense. I didn’t care, sometimes I thought I might be a little bit into girls, but Yann’s dick was too bomb to let go, you know?

**Manon Demissy:**

I honestly had no idea. I had no problem with it, I was just surprised. Once she told me, it was like something clicked in my brain, and I was able to further evaluate some of my brother’s behaviors recently. I wouldn’t say anything to him until he said something to me, but I started to wonder if his and Eliott’s relationship went beyond friendship. I mean, even he and I didn’t act like that around one another, and he was the person I was closest to in the world. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Daphné came into our apartment and told me she was a lesbian one morning while I was just chilling drinking my coffee. I didn’t know why she was telling me, but I just said ok and went back to my coffee.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I was still a little nervous to tell Imane, but I felt less apprehensive now that the rest of the band, and Alexia, knew. I decided I’d wait a little bit, just so I could work up the nerve, but I’d tell her by the time we released our second album. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

While the girls were writing music, I was trying to convince myself that love wasn’t real. I couldn’t write, because every time I tried to I just spewed how much I wanted to grow old with Eliott and kiss him all over his stupid beautiful face. I was also avoiding Eliott due to the aforementioned wanting to kiss him all over his stupid beautiful face.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I knew Lucas wasn’t writing, because I still talked to the other band members, but he told me that he was too busy writing to hang out with me. I didn’t know what it meant, didn’t know if it meant I was coming on too strong. I’m not sure I could have dialed it back if I wanted to at that point. Then he showed up at my place at three in the morning.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I deserve reparations for Lucas and Eliott’s bullshit. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I couldn’t sleep, which wasn’t unusual, and I felt like a dick. It wasn’t his fault that I was so fucked up I couldn’t believe that I deserved to give or receive love, so I passed it off as not believing in it at all.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I think he ran to our place, because he was panting and sweaty and if he hadn’t looked like he was about to pass out I probably wouldn’t have been able to form coherent thoughts. My first instinct was to ask him if he’d been drinking or using anything, but he promised he hadn’t been. I know I wasn’t someone to police others’ habits, but I wanted to look out for him in the way he looked out for me, even if he didn’t realize he was doing it. 

We went into my bedroom and he asked me if love was real.

I told him that he’d written a fair amount of love songs, so he probably knew better than most, but he just shook his head and told me that those didn’t count. They were either fake, or about non romantic love. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I loved my mom, I loved Manon, I loved my other band members, I loved Imane, but any time I thought about loving Eliott, my brain malfunctioned. I wasn’t stupid, I knew why, but from what I’d seen in my life, romantic love was fleeting and uncontrollable, and I hated that.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I asked him why he was asking me that, but he didn’t answer. I thought I knew, but I didn’t want to be optimistic. I didn’t want to get my hopes up and crash and burn.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I couldn’t tell him why I was asking, not when he was Eliott Demaury and I was just Lucas, and Lucas was never the type of person who could be good enough for someone like Eliott Demaury. Lucas was the type of person Eliott Demaury made out with in the bathroom once and never saw again. 

I guess we’d both fucked that one up.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I thought that if people had soulmates, maybe he could be mine.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I tried to leave, but he told me I was being stupid, so I stayed the night. We fell asleep on opposite sides of the bed and woke up on the same one, but neither of us addressed it. 

After that, I think we were dating without saying it. We didn’t kiss, or fuck, or whatever, but I stayed in his bed most nights, the only place I could get real sleep, and we would make breakfast together, or sit with each other’s heads in each other’s laps on the couch watching MTV until “Minute by Minute” came on and we pretended it was the first time either one of us had seen the video. 

When we went out, people recognized us an equal amount. A lot of them thought Eliott was in our band, actually. They’d ask us to sign things for them or take photos with polaroids and the like. Digital cameras had been a thing for a little while, but I hadn’t expected to have them shoved in my face unprompted when I went to get groceries with my not boyfriend. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas was a little more touchy feely with me, but only in private. I understood, but I wanted to broadcast how I felt about him with the world. I wanted to love out loud, but maybe Lucas didn’t love me like I loved him.

Because I was sure, by then, that I loved him. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I woke up next to him, one morning, and I knew. No matter how hard I’d tried to convince myself otherwise, I was in love with him.

I knew it like I knew that the sky was blue, and that Eliott was brighter than any star in a city full of them. 

Somehow, instead of freaking out about it like I had been doing, I just let it happen. That was probably a mistake, but I didn’t have the foresight to think so when I woke up to Eliott looking at me with the softest smile in the world, like he’d been in love with me his whole life and would be for the rest of it. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

There was one morning, where I was watching Lucas sleep, and he caught me looking. But he didn’t look away, and neither did I. That was when I knew I wasn’t imagining it, that he felt it too. That maybe he had all along, but both of us had been too cowardly to give it a go. I didn’t think he loved me, but I think he was considering what it might mean to allow himself to love.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I made a plan. I wasn’t the king of romance or anything, but something about Eliott made me want to try. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

All of a sudden, he was up and out of bed, telling me to get dressed and meet him outside in a few. I didn’t know what was going on, but I did as he asked. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I’m not sure if I mentioned this yet, but I had a motorcycle at that point in my life, and Eliott had a spare helmet. No need to call me a stupid gay because I am very aware of what I am. I thought it was a thing friends did, despite never riding my bike with any of my other friends or even my sister.

I took him to the Hollywood sign. I’m still not really sure why that was the place I chose, but it seemed right. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I asked him why we were there, and he told me it was for the view. He said it was weird to look at things from a different perspective sometimes, but in his experience it had done more good than harm.

I told him that I liked weird things, and he said that he did too. 

The view was breathtaking, really, and I got swept up in it. He didn’t, though, he just kept looking at me. I told him he was missing the view, but he just smiled at me and said that he wasn’t, that he was looking at the only thing that really mattered.

I asked him what he was trying to say, and he said, “I think you know.”

I did know.  _ God _ I knew. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Just before I could kiss him, he kissed me.

_ (Lucas smiles, looks down at his hands) _

I felt whole.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Kissing Lucas filled me to the brim with every happy thought I’d ever had. Loving him and getting to show him in such a physical way was the one thing I hadn’t totally realized I was missing. I felt whole. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Not that I didn’t already know, but Lucas and Eliott came back to the apartment and shoved their tongues down each other’s throats the second they closed the door. Neither of them knew I was home, obviously, so once they were settled away in Eliott’s bedroom I decided to go hang with Sofiane for a bit. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I still hadn’t asked out Imane. I’d lost my nerve, and I was convinced that now that our clients weren’t working with each other anymore, we’d have no reason to see each other either, no matter how much I wanted to.

**Yann Cazas:**

I was worried about Lucas again, but no one else seemed to be. Basile just laughed at me for thinking something was wrong, saying that I was jealous Eliott was Lucas’ new best friend. Maybe I was a little jealous, but I couldn’t blame him. I hadn’t been the best friend for a while, ditching him to be with Emma every chance I got. Granted, he didn’t know I was ditching him for Emma. No one did. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I told Arthur I was fucking Yann. I’m not sure why, but I felt like he was a bit isolated and I didn’t want him to be. Basile had Maria, Manon and Daphné were working away, and Lucas and Eliott were doing whatever the fuck Lucas thought was more important than working on our album.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I was more surprised I hadn’t figured it out sooner than that it had happened in the first place. It seemed so obvious, Yann was so clearly into Emma, had been for a long time. She was adamant that they were just ‘friends with a side of fucking’ but I wasn’t sure Yann felt the same. 

I appreciated her telling me, though, I think it was obvious that I was the seventh wheel. Or ninth, if Maria and Eliott counted. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Things carried on between Eliott and I for the next few months. We didn’t say we were dating, not explicitly, but we were practically married. We celebrated birthdays in secret and got to know each other’s bodies better than our own. It was a secret because we needed it to be, but I did tell Daphné because she caught us making out before one of our recording sessions. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I was really happy for him. He seemed happier than he ever had been too, and I hoped that energy would continue.

**Alexia Martineau:**

Eliott chilled with me a lot of the time the band was in the studio recording, and Lucas didn’t stay as late as I expected him to after everyone else went home. I figured out that, at the very least, they were fucking.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I told him that I loved him on a whim one night, when we were cooking dinner together. Idriss was gone, as he usually was when Lucas was over. I think he knew, even if I didn’t tell him explicitly. I wanted to tell him, but Lucas didn’t want anyone to know, so I respected that. Daphné only knew because we were dumb and couldn’t keep our hands off one another. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I wanted to tell him that I loved him back, because I really did, but I couldn’t form the words. It looked like he knew, though, so I didn’t sweat it. I figured we’d have all the time in the world.

But we got lazy.

Maybe lazy isn’t the right word, maybe careless is better. I knew Eliott didn’t care what people thought, and in a far corner of my mind, I didn’t either, but the more prominent part of my brain told me that it would be disastrous if anyone knew. And I was right.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Charles told me that he needed to talk to Lucas about his schedule with Alexia, so I obliged. If I’d have known… The point is that I didn’t. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I wasn’t hugely concerned with paparazzi, because it was nothing compared to what it is now. Well, maybe not nothing, but remember that we still weren’t on top of the world just yet. I didn’t think about them because there had never been a problem before. 

Then Charles showed me photos he’d been sent, of Eliott and I, and I realized just how much damage a few photos could do. Part of me wanted to say fuck it, let them release them, but Charles told me they’d already paid off the photographers. If it was solved, I didn’t know why he was bothering to tell me, but apparently it wasn’t solved. 

He told me that if things continued between Eliott and I, he’d drop us both, and not just me, but the whole band, and blacklist us in the music industry. I wished he was bluffing, but I knew he wasn’t. So, he said Eliott had to be gone from my love life, at the very least.

I made one of the stupidest decisions in my life, and I agreed. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Lucas came out of the meeting looking like a ghost. I asked him what was wrong and he just said he had more work left on the album than he’d originally thought. I left it at that. He’d been so happy recently that I wasn’t as worried as I had known to be previously.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas showed up at my place, like he had the night he asked me about love, and I thought he was going to tell me that he loved me too. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I told him that the thing between us was over. I didn’t want to say why, because I knew he’d fight with me over it, and that I’d give in to him because I loved him more than anything. He laughed like I was joking, until he realized I wasn’t laughing along. 

I told him that I was serious, and that it had been fun, but I needed to focus on my music, and that he was a distraction. Each word cut me like a knife, but I knew I had to dig it in deeper and deeper. 

My only hope was that we could wait for each other, wait until neither one of us needed Charles’ influence, and then we could do whatever the fuck we wanted. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I’d been convinced he was the love of my life, and there he was saying that I’d never meant all that much to him. I’d have put him above almost everything, and he was telling me that he’d put almost everything above me. 

Still, there was something in his eyes that made me want to push him further, call him a liar. I didn’t, though, and I let him go, my heart shattering in the process.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

My heart shattered on his doorstep, but I don’t think he heard it. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Listen, Lucas thinks he’s the authority on heartbreak because he can spin pretty words into a song and make hundreds of people cry with a single note. But he’s not. He’s not some victim in love, he did the things he did to himself. 

Sorry if that sounds bitter, but maybe you’ll understand where I’m coming from a little later. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Lucas came to me in shambles after breaking up with Eliott. He wouldn’t tell me why other than that he’d had to. I didn’t know what to say, so I just held him, let him cry into my favorite nightgown, and promised to be there for him no matter what.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I wouldn’t have made it through that and what came after without Daphy. 

**Manon Demissy:**

It hurt, to see Lucas clinging to Daphné like a lifeline.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I don’t want to say that I was depressed afterwards, because it didn’t feel the same to me as when I was having an episode, but there was a lingering emptiness. I thought he’d never loved me at all, and that maybe I’d just been some sort of experiment for him. 

I wanted to get blitzed out of my mind, but I held off until Idriss left to film another movie to entertain that idea. I had nothing else to do, “Minute by Minute” was done, and Charles hated me enough that I’d probably never record another record, so I went back to The Palace.

The Sun had been my bar of choice for the last year or so, because it had been Lucas and the band’s bar of choice, but The Palace was the perfect place for me to forget my own name and the way Lucas’ skin felt against mine. 

That was where I met Lucille. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I heard about Lucille before Lucas did, and I tried to keep it from him as long as I could. Unfortunately for all of us, Basile was oblivious as ever, and also way more in tune with celebrity gossip than I’d anticipated.

**Basile Savary:**

I don’t remember who it was who asked why Eliott hadn’t been around in a while, maybe Emma? All I did was repeat what I’d heard, that he had a new model girlfriend and he was probably busy with her.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Of course we wouldn’t wait for each other, he was Eliott Demaury and I was just Lucas. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucille was different from Lucas on almost every level. She was actually a lot like Camille, which I didn’t notice until Idriss pointed it out to me much later, which only proves that I never learn from any of my mistakes.

We hooked up one night at The Palace, and she gave me her number, and I called it. I didn’t really think anything would come of it, but she felt like the only person I could breathe around now that Lucas was gone. She also wanted to be with me in as public of a way as possible. Looking back, maybe that was a red flag, but it was everything I’d wanted to do with Lucas, so I let it happen. 

The anniversary of his mom’s death passed, and I was aware of it passing, but I spent the night in bed with Lucille. 

I hated myself for it a little bit, because I couldn’t find it in myself to hate him. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

All of a sudden Eliott and Lucille were the Hollywood power couple. It felt like it had happened overnight, and I didn’t know how that was possible if he’d ever loved me at all.

I’d been numb since we broke things off— since  _ I _ broke things off— but seeing Eliott and Lucille everywhere all the time, I got angry. 

The worst part of it was that he tried, actually, to be my friend. He came over sometimes because I wasn’t the only person he cared about in the band and asked if we could move past things, but I just couldn’t. I found somewhere else to be every time I saw him or heard his name.

**Eliott Demaury:**

A petty part of me wanted to make him jealous, to see if he’d ever cared at all, but he didn’t give me the time of day. I did ask if we could be friends, just once, when I was in a particularly melancholic mood, because lover or not, my life wasn’t the same without him. He didn’t even respond, which I took as a no. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Thankfully for me, that was all I needed to get some songwriting done. I decided that I was going to write an angry song, and it was going to be so fucking good. 

In reality, I wrote one song about yearning, one song about anger, and one song about a little bit more anger with a dash of regret and denial and blame shifting. I knew I was in the wrong for ending it, but he didn’t need to fall in love right in front of my eyes less than a month later. 

The yearning song, which you all know as “Lie to Me”, had its fair share of denial. Daphné was involved in that process a bit, changing some of the lyrics and pronouns for me so I wouldn’t out myself during a lovesick ballad of sorts. The original chorus was,  _ “Now I wish we never met / 'Cause you're too hard to forget / While I'm cleaning up your mess / I know you’re taking off her dress / I know that you don’t, but if I ask you if you love me / I hope you lie, lie, lie, lie, lie to me…” _

Not too big of a difference, but noticeable enough. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I started to realize that someone had broken Lucas’ heart and it wasn’t Chloé. I wanted to ask him about it, but the only person he was really talking to was Daphné, for whatever reason. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

“Run” was definitely a different vibe, but I was pissed off and I wanted him to know. I  _ know _ that it was my fault for the way things ended, for the fact that he was with Lucille at all, but that didn’t change the fact that, in my mind, he was my forever. The fact that he could move on so fast only proved to me that his love hadn’t been real, and that I was right to think it didn’t exist in the way it should. Everyone always left, when you gave them the chance to. First my dad, then my mom, and now Eliott. 

The heartbreak hat trick, as Daphné liked to call it, was rounded out with “To Be So Lonely,” which sort of ended up spilling out like a drunken phone call in which I refused to acknowledge the blame I shouldered and spitefully told him to never call me baby or try to be my friend ever again. 

I had a lot of complicated emotions going on in my head, but at least some bangers came out of it. Well, “Lie to Me” was more of a slow bop, and “To Be So Lonely” was more of a bitter groove, but “Run” was a banger. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I did not have the time or energy to unpack the contents of the heartbreak hat trick, but it was pretty self explanatory overall. Manon asked me about it, when Lucas brought “Lie to Me” to the studio to work on the instrumentals to match the lyrics. I didn’t know what to say, because I couldn’t really tell the truth in any capacity. I just said all I knew was that he’d asked me to work through some lyrics with him.

I felt horrible lying, and we both knew that was a lie anyway, because Lucas would rather have died than asked anyone for help with his music. That was how one of the last songs to be written for the album was born, though, in a roundabout way. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

“Reservoir”. That song was about Manon and I’s newly strained relationship. She’d stopped talking to me because I wasn’t really talking to her, and I got jealous of her friendship with Daphné and the others for no reason, and I think she felt the same about me and Daphné. I didn’t want her to know it was about her, though, so I made the lyrics a lot more obscure than my lyrics usually were. 

**Emma Borgès:**

“Reservoir” felt like a song Lucas made with me in mind, for a change. I’d been playing around with a new electronic synthesizer and wanted to use it on one of our songs, but we’d all been wary of it given our current sound. I think with “Reservoir” Lucas just kind of said fuck it, realizing we didn’t owe anyone any particular sound, and that experimentation was actually one of our greatest assets at the end of the day. 

I mean, if they could do what they did with the guitar riffs in “Run”, “Reservoir” didn’t seem too weird to add to the album.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

With “Reservoir” on the docket, we had eleven songs, just like  _ Fifteen Minutes of Fame _ , but for some reason the album still didn’t feel finished to me. Sure, we still had some recordings and production tweaking to be done, but I felt like we needed another song. “Minute by Minute” would be a good closer, tying everything together, and it looked like that was going to be the album title as well since so many people knew and loved that song, but something wasn’t right.

We’d been working through the album lineup, and it all looked good until the very end. “Lovers in the Moonlight” and “Can I Call You Tonight” were first on the album, because they were the songs about hopeful love, or that crushlike feeling trying to decipher your own feelings. That led into “Reservoir”, “Scrawny”, and “South”, which were all deeply personal songs in different ways, masked with a catchy chorus or a more poppy beat. “South” was the closer of that section because it was the most emotional of the three, and that made sense.

Then came Daphné’s songs, which I definitely would have made a fuss about if I hadn’t been distracted by Eliott and if they hadn’t been genius. I knew I would never understand what it meant to be a woman in that time, or even now, but “Pretty Girl” leading into “Seashore” was very intentional, and even I, as a certified idiot, could see it. Even Basile could see it. 

Then came the heartbreak hat trick, because the album had to tell a bit of a story. The beginning had been hopeful, drunk on the idea of love, and now we saw what happened when that idea came crumbling to the ground. The problem with this was that “Minute by Minute” following “To Be So Lonely” made no sense. TBSL left off on a sour note, and MXM was the exact opposite. We weren’t necessarily telling a cohesive story, but there needed to be one more song, right between TBSL and MXM, something that captured the hopelessness of the previous song but also led into the hopeful and euphoric nature of the following song. 

That was how “Viva La Vida” came to be, and to our surprise, that’s still one of our most popular songs. It was about falling from grace, but growing from who you were before and being better because of it. 

I knew I’d fucked up with Eliott, but I hadn’t really had a choice in the matter. It was either lose him or lose everything, and I may have been in love, but I was twenty two. I had so much to lose, for the first time in my life. A stupid part of me had told me that I could have both, I’d just have to wait, but once Lucille came into the picture I realized I could never have both, so I decided that I’d learn to be fine with it. I’d make this album better than anyone was expecting, better than anything the world had ever seen, I’d never see Eliott again, and maybe things wouldn’t feel so bad after a little while. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

The album came together beautifully. Seriously, it’s still one of my favorite bodies of work I’ve ever produced. Every song took you on a different journey, but just enough of them lined up in intentional— and sometimes heartbreaking— ways. 

The “Lie to Me”, “Run”, “To Be So Lonely” transition never fails to take me out. The first time I listened to those in the order they were meant to be played… whew. 

I’d known Lucas for nearly four years by then, and still, somehow, I was underestimating his talent. I was also underestimating his depths. Sure, I’d figured out what was going on with him and Eliott, but I hadn’t talked to Eliott much since they’d seemingly broken things off, and Lucas and I weren’t close like that, so he wasn’t going to tell me what was going on. 

Clearly, though, things had run a bit deeper than I’d thought. 

**Yann Cazas:**

The album was killer, it really was, but I couldn’t hear the songs without wondering what and who they were about. I’d known that a lot of emotions had been faked on our previous songs, or written as love songs when they were actually anything but, but the songs on  _ Minute by Minute _ couldn’t have been faked, emotion wise. 

Sometime when I hadn’t been looking, Lucas had fallen in love and it had ended in catastrophe. I wondered if Eliott knew anything about it, then wondered if maybe Eliott’s new girlfriend had been Lucas’ old one, because they weren’t talking and “Lie to Me” alluded to the fact that the girl he’d loved was now with someone else.

**Basile Savary:**

I honestly thought he’d bs-ed a lot of it. I didn’t think he could have kept that much from all of us. But when I heard him record those songs, I knew it wasn’t fake. There was no faking that feeling.

**Manon Demissy:**

I still wasn’t talking to Lucas, though I began to feel ridiculous about it. We weren’t kids anymore, we should be able to have a conversation like adults and move on into a stronger relationship with one another.

I really loved “Viva La Vida”, and I wanted to tell him, and I also wanted to know if he loved “Seashore” the way that I did. Daphné did all the vocals for “Pretty Girl”, but I did the backing vocals for “Seashore”, and I’d helped write it, and there was no one I wanted to share that accomplishment with more than Lucas. 

But we were— and are— both stubborn to our cores, whether we liked it or not. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

The album that they played for me in the studio was not the album that I’d been expecting. I didn’t think it would get as deep as it got, and I was both surprised and unsurprised to know that Lucas wrote all the songs that were hitting me in such a visceral way. Daphné’s songs were incredible too, don’t get me wrong, I was really glad I’d decided to give her a chance to shine, but Lucas’ songs came from a place I didn’t even know he’d been in. 

It wasn’t my business to ask, as his manager, but I wanted to ask as his friend, if only to make sure everything was all right. I didn’t even consider the fact that Eliott might have anything to do with it, I just assumed they’d stopped hanging out as much because Eliott had gotten a girlfriend and Lucas was working nonstop. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I didn’t know when they finished the album, didn’t know what any of the songs were, because I didn’t really talk to anyone from the band on a daily basis at that point. The boys and I were still decently close, and Emma probably called or hung out with me most often, but Daphné obviously took Lucas’ side, and Manon didn’t like me much anyway. I wondered if she knew what had gone down, and what story Lucas had spun to make himself the victim.

I pretended not to care, though, because I had Lucille, and that should have been enough. It was, and it wasn’t. I didn’t like the time we spent alone very much, I felt it harder to connect with her than with Lucas, everything had always been so easy with him, but I figured that took time. I hadn’t connected immediately with Camille either. 

The time we were out in public, though, felt freeing. If I wanted to hold her hand or kiss her or even just look at her like she was the center of my world, I could. I couldn’t do that with Lucas, and I didn’t realize how much I needed that obvious show of affection at that point in my life. It made it all more real to me.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I’d forgotten about the Rolling Stone cover shoot. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

We weren’t doing an album cover shoot this time around, because we’d gotten a cool illustration done instead, which I think matched the vibe of this album better now that a lot of people knew who we were, so all we had left before the album release was the Rolling Stone shoot and the magazine release.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Eliott hadn’t expected to be a part of the Rolling Stone shoot, for some reason, so I had to do a lot of rearranging to get him there. I suspected Lucille had a lot to do with it, and I wanted to say something about it, but I couldn’t, because she seemed to be making him happy, and I only wanted him to be happy.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I knew right from the start that this thing with Lucille was probably going to be more trouble than it was worth. They’d only been dating a few months but she was already trying to get him to move in with her. She probably would have conspired to get herself knocked up to tie him down if she hadn’t been a model and she cared too much about how she looked to derail that by having a baby. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I didn’t have any intention of moving in with Lucille so soon, but I wouldn’t have said never. Lucas didn’t want me, she did. If she kept wanting me, maybe that was a sign that she was the person I’d thought Lucas was.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

When Lucas saw that Eliott was there for the shoot, he refused to do it, saying that he’d only do it if it was only the band. Now, I knew Lucas was very particular about a lot of things, but his particularity had always had a blindspot when it came to Eliott, in the year and a half they’d known one another, so I didn’t understand the change.

I also didn’t put together in my mind how it might have had something to do with some of Lucas lyrics and the experiences he’d drawn from. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I was willing to be friendly. I told myself I was over him so much that I almost believed it. He, on the other hand, was not so willing.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I’d ruined the best thing in my life because of fucking Charles Munier and Eliott didn’t appear upset about it in the slightest. I’d considered telling him, why I did what I did, but I knew it wouldn’t matter now. He had Lucille, and she could be everything I wasn’t for him. I’d come to terms with it, but it didn’t mean I had to be happy about it. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I was so thrown off by Lucas’ abrupt shift in mood when Eliott got there to properly remember that I was mad at him. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I had no idea what was going on, but I just wanted to get the whole thing over with. My hearing had been bothering me more than usual, and I really didn’t want to have to deal with it in front of everybody. 

**Alexandre Delano (photographer):**

I recognized Eliott, obviously, because I actually knew him, and I recognized the rest of them because they were a fair bit famous. Not as famous as they would be in time, but famous enough. I’m glad I was the photographer assigned to that shoot, that’s for sure. 

**Emma Borgès:**

The photographer was, in the simplest terms, hot as fuck.

**Yann Cazas:**

I wanted to wear my yellow turtleneck to the shoot, but I didn’t want them to know I still had it, you know?

**Basile Savary:**

While Lucas was throwing a fit, I was chilling with Sofiane and Alex, the photographer. I didn’t know if Sofiane liked me or not, and I honestly still didn’t know if Imane liked me or not, but anywhere was better than being caught in the crossfire of Lucas and Imane’s conversation. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I told him to stop being a little bitch. I didn’t know or care what happened between him and Eliott at that moment, I needed him to be fucking professional. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It seemed like the easiest thing in the world, to stop being a brat, and listen to Imane, but I just  _ couldn’t _ . It felt like it was out of my control. 

In the end, obviously, I did the shoot, but it honestly would have been better if I hadn’t.

**Eliott Demaury:**

While Lucas was throwing a tantrum, I had to resist the urge not to react back. Did he forget that he was the one who broke my heart? I told him I loved him, and he never said it back, not once. He called things off and stopped talking to me, what was I supposed to do? Wallow in that forever? Beg him to take me back? We weren’t even officially together or anything, he wouldn’t let us be. 

But I knew that melting down on set would only make things worse for everyone, so I sucked it up and pretended that Lucas and I had no issues, that I barely even knew him at all. That I didn’t know he liked when I kissed behind his ears or when I played with his hair. 

**Alexandre Delano:**

There was some severe sexual tension coming at me from every angle, and I was just trying to figure out who the culprits were. There were multiple angles, from what I could discern, none of them what I expected at all. 

Emma and Yann were obviously fucking. It was very clear that he was head over heels for her, so I’m sure she was the one that suggested a casual relationship or whatever they had going on.

Daphné wasn’t out to the world at that point, so I didn’t  _ know _ , but like, the way she looked at Manon wasn’t very heterosexual at all. I would know, I’ve dabbled across many different genders myself, each of them great as the last one. I don’t think Manon picked up on it, though, or maybe she wasn’t interested. 

Imane and Sofiane weren’t even a part of the shoot and they were fogging up my lens with the heated stares they thought no one could read into. I didn’t think they were together or anything, but damn, they should have been.

Then, of course, there were Eliott and Lucas. I’m not sure if it was sexual tension or pure hatred, but it was something all right. My vote was for sexual tension, because I saw the way they looked at one another when the other wasn’t looking back. It made for a great magazine cover, is all I’ll say.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

That magazine cover is what started some of the rumors, probably. I mean, literally everything I did after that probably didn’t help, but somehow Alex caught me looking wistfully at Eliott, and him looking wistfully back at me. I didn’t even remember making eye contact at that moment, but somehow it had happened. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

If I’d gotten to give input on the cover, I never would have let that one go to print. Daphné was looking at Manon as if she was some sort of deity, Lucas and Eliott are either trying to burn holes in each other’s eyeballs or something else I did not have the capacity to consider at the time, Yann and Emma looked like they’d just been fucked, Basile is the only one looking at the camera, and Arthur just looked confused, like he stumbled onto the wrong shoot. 

It was a disaster, but somehow the public ate it up. They ate up the article too, and then we released the album, and they bought it in droves. We went platinum faster than I could even blink my eye. Suddenly, there was a year long world tour planned, starting almost immediately, and to top it all off, Sofiane had just asked me out. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Timing was never my strong suit. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was so glad when Imane told us about the tour. If I needed anything, it was to be away from Eliott for an indeterminate amount of time doing what I loved every night. I didn’t care if I had to be on lockdown with Manon and Imane every night, anything was better than the hell I was living knowing Eliott was only a call away, but he wasn’t, because neither of us had the right to call each other anymore, really.

I should have known that whenever I get excited about something, the world would have a funny way of turning it into my own personal hell.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

The band needed an opener for the tour, and the crowds wanted to hear “Minute by Minute” live. It was the perfect opportunity for everyone. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I said yes without even thinking of the consequences. I’d had too much alone time with Lucille, and I’d been missing performing more than anything, I needed a bit of an escape. Only, Lucas would be there too, and he was part of what I was escaping from. Idriss didn’t think it was a good idea, but I’d have Imane and Sofiane there with me, so it had to be fine. My little makeshift studio band would be coming too, and they were always fun to hang around. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I told everyone else before I told Lucas, because I needed them all on my side. This was bigger than some petty disagreement, many careers were at stake.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I told Lucas before Imane had a chance to, because I could take him blowing up at me, and I didn’t want her to have any reason to want to kill him before the tour. 

As expected, he did not take the news well, but since it was me there was more crying and panicking than yelling and cursing the world. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I owe Daphné Lecomte so much, I swear.

**Manon Demissy:**

Is it bad that I was a little bit happy Eliott would be coming along on the tour because I was still pissed at Lucas?

Don’t answer that, I know it is.

**Yann Cazas:**

A year long world tour… man, I was more excited than I could put into words. I was glad Eliott was coming too, I’d rather have had him as an opener than some rando. Plus Sofiane was always fun to hang out with too.

**Emma Borgès:**

Another tour sounded great, honestly. As much fun as I was having with Yann, some of the thrill had worn off. I felt like we needed a new atmosphere if we wanted it to keep working. Plus, I was really proud of our music, and I wanted to be able to show the world just how good we were. 

**Basile Savary:**

I was a little upset to be leaving Maria for such an extended period of time, but we’d decided to move in together when I came back, and I was looking forward to that greatly. I wasn’t sure how I was going to tell the rest of the crew, but I didn’t think we’d all live in those two shitty apartments together forever, especially after all the cash we’d be rolling in from  _ Minute by Minute _ . 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Loud noises weren’t exactly what I should have been looking for at that time, but it was my life, and it couldn’t be put on hold, not when I had six other people depending on me. I told myself that I was overreacting anyway, that everything would be just fine. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

It’d be the first tour I had my own songs to sing at, and that was really exciting for me. Plus, I was feeling more connected with everyone than I had during the last album and tour, so this one was already shaping up to be better than the last.

**Manon Demissy:**

Charles called to congratulate us on the success of  _ Minute by Minute _ , and I talked to him for a while. I knew everyone had their opinions about him, but when it was just the two of us he was actually really nice and funny. He told me he would come out to some of our shows, and secretly I wasn’t mad about it. 

I didn’t tell anyone, though, because I knew what a dick he was generally. I thought that maybe I could change him.

_ (Manon sighs) _

I never really considered myself naive until I lost that ability, and it’s hard to tell when you’re being manipulated if the person doing it has a lifetime of practice. Just trust me when I say that you should never devote yourself to changing someone else, because the only one that’s going to change in that process is you.

**Eliott Demaury:**

It hit me like a ton of bricks the day before we left that I’d be spending a year, uninterrupted, with Lucas Lallemant. Lucille told me she would visit and come to some of our shows when she could get away, but Lucas would always be there. I wouldn’t be able to not think about him if he was singing like he did right in front of me every night. 

I didn’t listen to the album, so I didn’t  _ know _ , but I found out soon enough. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Singing the heartbreak hat trick on stage in front of Eliott seemed like the first and last thing I’d ever want to do. I mostly hoped he’d keep to himself on his bus, and I’d keep to myself on ours. 

Like I said, the universe has never been on my side, so I’m sure you can guess just how well that one worked out for the both of us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next week: track 6: the minute by minute tour - winter 1984 to spring 1985
> 
> listen to the original songs via my tumblr: kieunora
> 
> listen to the album on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6NT3SWr6RXwppJkW3A9rlX
> 
> hope everyone is doing well and staying healthy !!
> 
> never hesitate to comment, i love hearing from u all more than you know <33


	6. Track 6: The Minute by Minute Tour - Winter 1984 to Spring 1985

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whassup homies how we doin (hope you're all doing well)
> 
> just a little heads up that i'm going to be sticking to weekly updates to the best of my ability but the last 4 chapters are fairly hefty so i'll warn u if i'm going to be taking a week off at any time! in any case, don't ever worry about this fic being abandoned or forgotten, because i promise that will never happen ;)
> 
> tw: brief mention of a panic attack, homophobia, reference to AIDS crisis*, substance abuse (alcohol)
> 
> *this is a very brief mention, it's more alluded to than anything, because i wanted the fic to be grounded in historical reality. since i haven't studied and researched the AIDS crisis as in depth as i have other topics, i didn't want to write about something i don't know all the details about

_ With their second album flying off the shelves, Seven Minutes in Heaven’s rise to fame was growing exponentially. First world tour underway, life should have been nothing but great for these rising stars. Behind closed doors, however, things weren’t as peachy as they seemed. “Twins” Lallemant and Demissy weren’t speaking to one another, Broussard was dealing with a disability he hadn’t told almost anyone about, and their opener, Eliott Demaury, was wreaking havoc on one group member in particular with his mere presence. They say that all’s fair in love and war, but is the same true for rock ‘n roll? _

**Lucas Lallemant (lead singer, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

Just over a month after the album dropped, Seven Minutes in Heaven was on the road. With Eliott.

**Imane Bakhellal (manager, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I still hadn’t given Sofiane an answer, but I knew I’d have to eventually with all of us on the road together. Eliott was his priority, obviously, but Eliott was also an adult who should be able to handle himself. 

_ (Imane sighs) _

I’m aware how hypocritical that sounds, considering the lot I managed, but they were all two years younger than Eliott, which felt like a lifetime sometimes. 

**Manon Demissy (lead guitarist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

The atmosphere wasn’t quite right. I’m not sure if it was because of Eliott and Lucas, or me and Lucas, or Emma and Yann, for some reason, or something else entirely, but the air was tense all the time. 

**Yann Cazas (bassist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

Emma said it was best if we made ourselves look like we weren’t so comfortable together, so I tried to do that, but I think it had a weird effect on our overall dynamic. Everyone knew Emma and I were close, and no one suspected we were fucking. Now they thought something was wrong. 

**Emma Borgès (keyboardist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I wanted to hang out with my girls more. I’d been severely neglecting them for Yann, and Daphné and Manon looked like they were closer than Manon and I used to be, which made me a little upset. There was also Arthur, who all of a sudden didn’t want to talk to anyone about anything, especially Basile.

**Arthur Broussard (drummer, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

Manon was still the only one who knew about the damage that had already been done, but I still hadn’t told anyone about the worries I had for the future. They would have cancelled the tour, or told me to go see a doctor, and that was the last thing I wanted to do. I decided, instead, to isolate myself from all of them. 

Great idea, I know, that one was going to work for sure.

**Basile Savary (rhythm guitarist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I was hoping our little trio, me, Daph Bean, and Arthur, would pick things up where we left off on the Fifteen Minutes tour. But Arthur didn’t want to talk to anyone, and Daph Bean only wanted to talk to Lucas or Manon, but never at the same time. I figured I’d have to join forces with either Yann and Emma or Eliott then.

**Daphné Lecomte (background vocalist and percussionist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

So, I had a crush on Manon. I was officially the last person to know about it, because I guess subtlety wasn’t really my strong suit, but at least she didn’t know either. Obviously, she’d never be interested in me or anything, I was pretty sure she was straight, but pining became my favorite pastime.

**Eliott Demaury (singer,** **_Le Premier_ ** **and** **_Polaris_ ** **):**

Touring was an exciting new adventure for me, and I wasn’t going to let anything ruin that. I was going to do my job, have fun, and avoid Lucas Lallemant like the plague. All in a day’s work, right?

**Sofiane Alauoi (manager, Eliott Demaury):**

This was going to be exciting for all of us. I’d never even been to many concerts, and at least with this bunch I liked the music they were playing, so I wouldn’t get too sick of it night after night. Imane and I would have a lot of alone time together, which I tried not to think about. And subsequently thought about every second of every day. 

**Alexia Martineau (producer,** **_Fifteen Minutes of Fame_ ** **,** **_Le Premier_ ** **,** **_Minute by Minute_ ** **, and** **_Polaris_ ** **):**

I didn’t have any production work, because I think Charles was saving me specifically for Seven Minutes in Heaven. I was fine with it some days, not so fine with it others. In the meantime I worked on some of my own music, just for fun. It never went anywhere, and that wasn’t what I was in the business for, but it gave me something to do. Weirdly, Charles had been making plans to go to various shows during the MXM tour, and told me I could tag along. 

As much as I didn’t want to spend extended periods of time with Charles, if he was paying for everything, and it meant I had something to do, I was in.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I was so nervous for the first show, I barely knew what to do with myself. I knew the number of songs I was allotted to sing, and I knew my cue to go onstage, but I didn’t know if anyone would be there for me, if anyone would care. What if they booed me off the stage? What if I got sudden stage fright? It had never happened before, but I wasn’t counting it out.

In the end I was prepared for all of that, though. What I wasn’t prepared for, was hearing from Sofiane that I wouldn’t be performing “Minute by Minute” with the band. Lucas refused to, so Daphné would be singing my parts instead. 

If I hadn’t thought that I’d have gotten kicked off the tour before it officially started, I would have given Lucas a piece of my mind.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t even a spiteful thing, I just couldn’t physically share the stage with him and sing that song. It was too much for me. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I thought Lucas was being a diva, and I thought it was ridiculous that everyone just let it happen. He had the whole world eating out of the palm of his hand, and he just abused that privilege, time and time again. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Manon was always complaining about Lucas this, Lucas that, but she could be just as bad as him sometimes. Like, she was easily the frontwoman of the band, no one cared about Emma or I, but she was always talking about everything like no one paid her any attention. Then, in the same breath, she’d act like she was above it all. 

It doesn’t make her a bad person, just makes her human, but it annoyed the shit out of Emma and I sometimes. If I wasn’t half in love with her, maybe it would have made me angry, but I was, so I somehow still found it endearing.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I tried not to let anything bother me, that first show, because I couldn’t deal with it being less than perfect. I knew some nights would be better than others, but I wanted everything to go right that first night. 

It did, thankfully. The crowd knew my songs, and they seemed happy to see me up there on the stage. They yelled and sang along, and they were sad to see me go. They kept yelling, requesting “Minute by Minute”, but I ignored that to the best of my ability. 

When I left the stage, sweaty and smiling, I didn’t even look at Lucas, or anyone else. In fact, I left the venue before they even made it to the stage, and I kept up that habit for quite a while. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

People were always confused to hear Daphné singing “Minute by Minute” with me, but they got used to it after a while. It threw me off too, sometimes, but it was for the best. 

**Yann Cazas:**

The first few months of tour flew by. I partied a lot, we all did, even Lucas. His drinks were soda, not alcohol, but he wasn’t on Imane lockdown anymore. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It wasn’t like I was an alcoholic, or maybe I was, I don’t really know. Truthfully, they probably should have been more worried about me using drugs, but whatever. I stayed clean that tour because I hadn’t before, and I didn’t want to fuck things up more than I already had. I also didn’t want to show up on Eliott’s bus in the middle of the night begging him to fuck me. I’d already lost enough of my dignity. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I still hung out with Imane most nights, because I preferred that to the party scene, but I stopped doing it as much when I realized Sofiane would be there too. It wasn’t because I didn’t like Sofiane, it was more because I could tell Sofiane and Imane liked each other, and if I was there as a buffer neither one of them would ever do anything about it.

**Basile Savary:**

Arthur never wanted to party with me, but he always went out on his own. He reminded me a lot of Lucas during the first tour, and that worried me. I didn’t want him to feel like he couldn’t talk to us about whatever was on his mind, like Lucas had felt when he’d thought Chloé was pregnant. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucille came to visit for the first time about three months into the tour. It was springtime, but we were in the northern midwest, so it didn’t really feel like it. There was always paparazzi around when we were together, but we were able to avoid it when we wanted to. Sometimes I wondered if she called the paparazzi to tell them where to be and when to be there.

One night, when I was on stage singing “Affluenza”, I felt something deep in the pit of my stomach. With Lucille, I’d sort of allowed myself to become the type of person that song was about, the Charleses of the world. I hated that, I hated myself, but I didn’t stop. I told myself that it didn’t matter what things looked like, because I was still me on the inside. But was I? Really? I still don’t really know.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I went off the rails in a different way than before, when Lucille came for the first time. I hated her. I’d never spoken a word to her, but I hated her. On principle. Daphné hated her too, for me, which I appreciated.

Seeing her and Eliott together, making out everywhere they went, was just too much for me. Hearing him call her baby was a knife to my chest. That was what he’d called  _ me _ , and even though I didn’t want him to try to call me baby again, that didn’t mean he could call her by the same pet name. I tried to avoid Eliott to the best of my ability, and he did the same, but sometimes it was impossible. I’d also noticed that he’d never once stayed at the venues past his opening set, but I tried not to let it bother me. 

I tried to pretend that a part of me didn’t want him to hear me sing the heartbreak hat trick and realize how much I still loved him, stupid as it was to feel that way when I knew we could never be together.

So, off the rails happened like this: Daphné and I going to gay bars, and me finding anyone who either looked exactly like Eliott or anything but, and mapping out their bodies in the ways I wished I was doing with Eliott. Of course, no one really looked just like Eliott, no one had that same spark, that sunshine, but some of them did the trick.

I don’t even think I remember any of their names, and I was sober every time. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I wished he’d been a little bit more careful, especially because any of those people could have leaked intimate details to reporters the very next day, but he always got lucky. In more ways than one. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was a bit sheltered, in my knowledge of a lot of things in the gay community, but certain health risks in particular. Obviously, now, we know that certain illnesses didn’t come from or stay within specific communities, but at the time? It was a completely different story. 

Once cases started popping up more and more and more media attention was given to the pandemic, I became more cautious, but never cautious enough. My life could have gone so much differently, but some god must have been on my side, because I made it out ok. 

_ (Lucas pauses) _

I just wish I could say the same for so many people, all those who lost lives and loved ones to a disease that the media ignored because it was greatly impacting a community they wished was dead. I’ll never forgive myself for not bringing more light to it, trying to destigmatize and raise awareness. I did some things, throughout my career, but not enough. 

At least I’ll never make that mistake again. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I saw Lucas, with various guys at various times. I knew I had no right to be jealous, or upset, but I was. And I couldn’t talk to anyone about it because Daphné would have taken Lucas’ side, and Lucille didn’t even know about my history with Lucas. Or about my attraction to more than one gender. 

It was hypocritical, for me to be mad at Lucas when I’d done the same thing less than a month after we’d called off whatever was going on between us, but such was life. 

Daphné talked to me once, telling me to stay for the band’s set one night, but I didn’t know why she’d found it necessary to say so. I told her I would, but I didn’t, if only to spite her. Twenty three year old Eliott had a lot of maturing to do, ok? 

So did twenty one year old Lucas, just saying. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Charles’ first visit marked the beginning of chaos, I think. I, personally, didn’t know that he hated Eliott at all— much less why— but his distaste for the fact that Eliott was our opener was very, very clear. 

I thought maybe that meant Lucas and Charles would get along, but there was something weird going on there too. Lucas never cowered in front of anyone, but he did in front of Charles. We all noticed, but none of us said anything because it was so disconcerting. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I asked Lucas, after Charles visited for the first time, what was going on. He was never like that with anyone, even when he should have been. He blew up on me, looked on the verge of some sort of panic attack. He yelled at me about nothing, I’m not even sure he knew what he was saying, and in the end Sofiane and I brought him back to his hotel room and stayed with him overnight while he passed out, curled in a ball like he was afraid of being hurt more than he already had been.

I wanted to know what was hurting him so badly, what I could do to help, but I knew that in the morning he’d pretend nothing had happened at all. I should have been better about not letting him pretend, but sometimes it was easier. 

**Charles Munier (studio head, Shame Records):**

It was nice to see Manon again. I didn’t know for sure, but I assumed she didn’t have a boyfriend anymore. If she did, I decided it wasn’t my problem anyway.

**Alexia Martineau:**

I still didn’t like the way Charles looked at Manon, but I also didn’t like the way Manon was starting to look at Charles.

**Manon Demissy:**

I didn’t like him, I promised myself I didn’t, but sometimes he made me feel special, and wanted, and I’d been feeling really unwanted a lot recently.

**Charles Munier:**

I asked them all out to dinner, but Lucas and Daphné didn’t come, Eliott wasn’t invited, Arthur didn’t pay attention at all and left early, Basile followed him out, and Yann and Emma left pretty much immediately once the bill was paid, without so much as a thank you. That left just Manon and I.

**Manon Demissy:**

I told him that I should have been going too, but he said he’d treat me to dessert, if I wanted. I didn’t know how to say no to him. 

**Charles Munier:**

She seemed so shy and demure around me, so different than how she was on stage. I wasn’t sure if I liked how she acted on stage, if I’m being honest. She took up as much space as any of them, which I don’t think anyone wanted. She was the most beautiful of the girls in the band, the audiences wanted to see her being beautiful, no more, no less.

Being a woman was better than being a [redacted], though, so I guessed it didn’t hurt that she took away from Lucas’ spotlight. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I couldn’t really get a word in edgewise around him, so I was quieter than usual. He was also technically my boss, and I didn’t want to be on his bad side. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I didn’t realize that me not going to that dinner would leave Manon alone with him. Maybe I would have gone, then, but I didn’t. I was over him and how he treated me, and how he treated Lucas. I wish I could say things got better once he left, but they didn’t. They only got worse. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Before one of the shows, there was a man trying to come backstage, claiming he knew Lucas. I had no idea who he was, and I knew practically everyone in Lucas’ life, but I went to find Manon just in case. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Yann said it was about Lucas, and I really didn’t care, but Yann wasn’t going to let me be stubborn, so I heard him out. I didn’t recognize the man either, and I told him so, and I told him he should either just ask Lucas or tell the guy he couldn’t come in.

**Yann Cazas:**

I think I figured it out a second before Lucas told me. The way all the blood drained out of his face and he immediately went into fight or flight mode… I was unsurprised when he told me that was his father, his biological father. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I hadn’t seen him in a long time, but I knew it was him. He looked exactly the same. He hadn’t seen me yet, so I had to figure out how I was going to respond to the situation. 

**Yann Cazas:**

He stood there frozen for a good minute or two, and then suddenly his mask was back. I hadn’t realized that he hadn’t been wearing it for a very long time until he put it back on. I didn’t like to see it, or what that meant. 

He went to go talk to his dad. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

He wasn’t my dad. As many problems as I’d had with Richard, he was my dad. This man in front of me, he was insignificant to my life.

He had the audacity to pretend he meant something to me, that we meant something to each other. He didn’t even know my mom was dead, and I didn’t bother to tell him. I didn’t even use his last name, I used my mom’s maiden name, so I wasn’t sure how he even knew it was me. I mean, obviously he knew her maiden name and could probably put two and two together, but I just mean that even if I’d thought I’d ever cross paths with him again— which I didn’t— I hadn’t considered the possibility of him coming to one of our shows.

He made small talk, I didn’t listen or provide any sort of real answers. He told me that his business was booming, like I cared at all, and that he’d remarried twice after my mother, neither one sticking very long. I don’t know why he thought that would mean anything to me, I don’t know why he was there at all. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Lucas started getting this glazed over look, so I decided it was time to pull him out of that particular equation. His dad seemed understanding, said he was excited for the show, but I could tell it was taking every ounce of self control Lucas had not to pounce on him.

I guided Lucas backstage and prepared myself for the worst, willing to take the brunt of his pain if it would get it out of his system.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

There was a song that we’d written for the album, before the heartbreak hat trick. I never got around to writing the lyrics for it beyond a few scribbles, but I had a sudden stroke of inspiration. Just before Yann pulled me away, I told my dad I’d play a special song for him, and he looked so pleased with himself. 

**Basile Savary:**

Lucas told us to play the song that later became known as “Cemetery”, and we were all a bit confused. We’d never played an unreleased song before, and last I knew he didn’t even have lyrics for it.

**Manon Demissy:**

I was going to argue, but then Yann backed him up, saying that we needed to play this song. So I shut up and agreed. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I didn’t know what Lucas had planned, but whatever it was had to be better than him taking it out on the rest of us.

**Emma Borgès:**

The concert started as the rest of them did. Eliott sang his songs, then ducked out the back, we went onstage and sang some songs from our setlist until Lucas decided he wanted to play the new one. We never released that one traditionally, but the label released it on a demo after the band split, because it was a song a lot of people liked. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

We all knew the lyrics to the song weren’t written, Lucas pretty much told us so when he asked if we could play it, but we let it happen anyway. 

He must have had some idea though, because he didn’t miss a beat once we started. 

**Yann Cazas:**

_ “Never made time for the family / But he’s the richest man in the cemetery / Only made time for the company / But he’s the richest man in the cemetery.” _

I mean, you can’t say he didn’t know what he was doing.

He ad libbed that whole song, switched a couple words around on the chorus and such here and there, but the sentiment remained the same. I was the only one who knew why he was singing it, and I have to say, I was fully on board.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I caught on fast enough, with the chorus, that I was able to do some background vocals near the end. I figured it would be another song for Eliott, but it wasn’t. Manon told me that someone had come backstage asking for Lucas before the show, and I wondered if this song had anything to do with it. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It felt good. To sing that, to him. I think I saw him leave right afterwards, but that only meant I got my message across. 

I never saw him again, only heard he died in his early seventies. I wonder who came to his funeral, and if he really was the richest man in the cemetery.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Someone talked to someone who overheard something and blah blah blah, and suddenly it was all over the news that Lucas Lallemant had made up a song on the spot at a concert, and he was being hailed as the god of music. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Words could be a currency better than money sometimes. All you had to do was let the right ones slip, and dreams came true. 

_ (Daphné laughs) _

Maybe I should have made a career in politics.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I came out of that show feeling cautiously good. My dad was gone, and Daphné had been spreading around that I’d written that song on the spot, which was mostly true, but it wasn’t like I hadn’t already had an idea of what I wanted to say. 

The only problem was, now people wanted to know what all the songs were about. More precisely,  _ who _ .

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wasn’t there when Lucas made up a song on stage, but I heard about it alright. It would be impossible not to. If Lucas was famous before that, it was nothing compared to now. Selfishly, I hoped that meant he wouldn’t be able to hook up with random guys anymore. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t risk going to gay bars with Daphné, and I don’t think she wanted to risk it much either. Secretly, I was a little bit glad. Not just because of the extra fame, though I will admit I enjoyed that, but mostly because I was tired of trying to fill a void I knew was never going to be filled. I could fuck all the guys in the world, but I knew there was only one I actually wanted. 

The best I could do was try to get over him a different way, because clearly sex hadn’t worked like I’d hoped it would.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Lucas was… something else after the improvisation on stage. At least with the press. Surprisingly, he hadn’t been toting his genius to us that much. 

Everyone wanted to know what all his songs were about now, and they wouldn’t stop asking. I think they especially wanted to know about Lovers and the heartbreak hat trick, I know I did. 

But you know what he’d say, to each person, when they asked?

_ “Why, they’re about you, of course.” _

People ate that shit up. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

What the fuck was I supposed to say? Everyone knew I hadn’t been with Chloé in a while, and I really didn’t want to have to answer to her if I told everyone I’d written all those songs about her.

**Manon Demissy:**

An interesting thing that came out of Lucas’ impromptu song was that we all kind of realized, why wait to write more music? Even if we didn’t use it for our next album, it might spice up our set list a bit.

**Emma Borgès:**

I kind of wanted to just enjoy the tour without turning it into work, but the rest of them really wanted to write more music, so I went along with it.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I may not ever get many songs on the album, but Lucas and I were in a good enough place in our relationship that he was open to me writing and singing a few more songs during the tour. I took that and ran with it.

The only problem was that I was really bad at writing songs that weren’t gay.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was beginning to realize that I was having trouble making my music gender neutral. Everything was quite gay. I was able to change some pronouns easily on some of them, but others were a bit more tricky.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Lucas and I realized we were having the same problem, and with that came an obvious solution. He’d sing  _ my _ gay songs, I’d sing his, and all of a sudden they were straight as a ruler. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

We weren’t on the same bus most of the time, and I’d barely hung out with any of them at all, but when I did they told me that they were working on new songs specific to the tour. They didn’t think they were going to release any of them, but they wanted to have some fun and funnel their creativity during the tour. 

And just like that, I found another loophole. 

Charles had said I couldn’t record and release any of the songs I wrote, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t perform them. I bonded a little bit with my backup band that way, because I obviously needed their help in the process. Sander and I were actually really similar, and we shared a deep love for David Bowie. 

Shay was too cool for me then, and she’s still too cool for me now. I actually wonder what she’s up to these days, I wouldn’t mind having a little reunion with all of them. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Lucille came to visit again, but I think she and Eliott got into a fight, because she left the morning after she came. My thoughts on the matter? Good riddance. 

Of course, my luck wouldn’t last long, because Charles decided to make another appearance. I hated that I was afraid of him now, that he held that power over me.

**Manon Demissy:**

I knew Charles was coming. He’d been calling periodically, and I was the only one who was ever willing to talk to him. I just… I don’t know, I got to thinking that he wasn’t that bad. 

He hid a lot of things from me, obviously, and exploited the fact that I wasn’t speaking to Lucas and he knew it. He knew I would have taken Lucas’ side if he told me what happened between them, so he couldn’t let that happen. Instead, he subtly drove that wedge further, preying on my salient feelings of being second to Lucas in everything my whole life.

Would I have ever become the It Girl of the eighties without Charles? Probably not, but looking back on it I don’t see that as a bad thing. You know what they say about hindsight. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I was pissed off, because I wrote a song for Lucille, and she didn’t care. I mean, she wasn’t obligated to listen to me whenever I wanted her to, but I wasn’t obligated to that either. I’d wanted to stay in with her, sing her my song, and feel as in love as I pretended to be on a daily basis. 

It wasn’t that I wasn’t in love, it was more that I didn’t know what love was supposed to be without Lucas. I did love Lucille, I think, but it wasn’t the same.

She didn’t want to stay in, she wanted to go out and get our photos taken together, and have the whole world begging at our feet. I told her no, which she didn’t like, then I said she could go out without me, but she said that wasn’t the point. If we wanted to be the most loved couple in the world, we had to put in the effort, she said, and I think I said something along the lines of  _ What the hell is the point of it all? _ and she got mad again. I don’t blame her, but I don’t blame myself either.

In the end, we went out, but we came back to the hotel early and stayed in separate rooms. I wrote “Not In The Same Way” in her absence.

I also revisited “Sunshine Boy”, for some reason. I don’t know what drew me to it, but I couldn’t let it go. All I could think of was singing it to Lucas, or him singing it to me. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I never really watched or listened to Eliott’s sets if I could help it, it hurt too much, but that night, the last night Charles was there, I did. We were in New York for three shows, so Charles was there for three shows too. Imane told me I had to look like I was supportive of Eliott while Charles was there, so I watched his shows. I didn’t expect what happened. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucille was gone, and I was angry, and most of all I couldn’t get Lucas out of my mind. It was so unfair to Lucille, I know that. In a way, it felt like cheating, though I can say that I never went  _ that _ far. I truly repressed any and all feelings I had to the best of my ability. I just figured that maybe, if I sang “Sunshine Boy” once, I’d get it all out of my system. 

I knew what that meant, I knew people would have a lot of questions about who I loved and why. But honestly, I was tired of being in the closet. I wanted to go to a pride parade, or date guys in the future, openly, if things didn’t work out with Lucille. I wanted to write songs without fussing over the pronouns or what people would think about me.

**Alexia Martineau:**

I was the only one who’d heard “Sunshine Boy” in its entirety, to my knowledge at least. Maybe he’d shared it with Lucas at some point, and that’s why everyone started calling  _ him _ sunshine boy, instead of Lucas. I knew the band he was working with had come up with something for him to match his lyrics to, though, even if he’d never shared the full lyrics with them, and I recognized it right away.

I was with Imane and Sofiane backstage, talking through ideas for my next hair color. I’d had pink for the first album, it was blue at the time, but I was a little bit over the blue, I felt like there needed to be something fresh for after their tour. I didn’t know where Charles was.  _ He _ knew about me being bisexual, and I think he only tolerated it because of his misogyny and belief that women did everything for the pleasure of men. I couldn’t imagine what he would do when he heard Eliott singing that song.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

None of us were paying much attention to Eliott’s set, but all of a sudden Lucas looked like he’d seen a ghost. He left us and went right up to the side of the stage, listening intently. I think that was when everyone knew, except for Manon, because she was with Charles somewhere else.

**Yann Cazas:**

Some things started making some more sense, even more so when I listened to the lyrics of the song Eliott was singing. 

**Basile Savary:**

Eliott was singing about a sunshine boy, which is what we all called him, before we got scared that Lucas would castrate us for speaking to him at all. We already knew that Eliott was into dudes, both because he’d told us and because, statistically, one of us had to be, and it wasn’t me. The jury was still out on Yann, Lucas, and Arthur though. I’d actually had my money on Yann, because he was weirdly secretive about his sex and dating life, even though we all knew he was getting some action.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t figured it out before. Lucas’ sudden friendship with Daphné, his sudden obsession and subsequent hatred of Eliott. The sour look on his face every time Lucille was around. The heartbreak hat trick. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I mean, yeah. It was obvious. I didn’t know that no one else knew until then. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Eliott had not told me what he was planning on doing, so I was as shocked as everyone. You’d think, as his manager, he might have thought that worthy of my knowledge, but no, of course not. I called Idriss to tell him and all he said was, “Wait you didn’t know he and Lucas were fucking?”

I had not known. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Sofiane clearly hadn’t known, but some of the band members clearly had. I wasn’t going to jump to any conclusions until I had the story from Lucas himself, but puzzle pieces were fitting themselves into place.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

He was doing it, just like that, the thing I’d ruined our relationship over. I knew he’d never been as afraid as I’d been, but I didn’t expect it like this. It was one of our biggest shows on the entire tour, and the media would run with it and spread it like wildfire. 

I also had the stupidity to wonder if that meant he’d broken up with Lucille, if this was his way of saying he still loved me too. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I saw Lucas at the side of the stage, but I pretended I didn’t. I had to pretend I didn’t see him, otherwise I wouldn’t have made it through the song. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

If he would have come off that stage and told me that I was the one, that he wanted me, no matter what, I think I would have pulled him onstage and kissed him in front of everyone, career be damned.

But he didn’t do that. He said goodnight to the stunned crowd, came off stage, and passed me by without so much as a glance. He didn’t hang around long enough to listen to our set, but he never did. I wondered if it was because of the songs we were playing, or if he’d even listened to them at all. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Damage control was my new middle name, it seemed. The only thing Idriss told me, other than that Eliott and Lucas had been, for lack of a better word, ‘fucking’, was to make sure Eliott wasn’t manic. I didn’t know how to make sure of such a thing, so I just asked him. He got quite mad at me for asking, but I don’t blame him for that. I felt bad as soon as I asked.

**Eliott Demaury:**

The first thing Sofiane asked me was if I was manic. Like the only reason I’d do something like that was if I was out of my mind. Well, my head felt clearer than it had in months. I told him that, then I told him to fuck off, then I left, and I called Lucille. 

To my surprise, it was nice to hear her voice. She’d know about what I did in the morning, but for the night we could just talk, and I wouldn’t have to pretend to be in love with her. 

**Charles Munier:**

Eliott Demaury’s stunt cost me quite a bit. Now the whole world knew that one of our most prominent— somehow, despite my best efforts— artists was a [redacted].

Are you serious? I can’t say that? I said it before and you didn’t say anything… 

Whatever. They knew he wasn’t heterosexual. Is that better for you? 

No one would want to be associated with the type of person who signed someone like that, but I couldn’t drop him in the middle of the tour. Not when gay rights campaigns were popping up all over the place and one wrong step in  _ that _ direction could lead to a whole host of other troubles. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

The morning after the show, right before Charles left and right before we were heading off on the road again, Charles told me he was pulling Eliott’s band from the tour, because they had to work with an artist back in LA. And, for good measure, he’d be taking Eliott’s bus back too, since there was more than enough room for the two of us on the Seven Minutes bus.

I saw right through him, and I tried to argue, but it was no use. We were screwed.

The media was also having a field day. I got a bunch of calls before we left about having Eliott on different shows or with different journalists for interviews, but I turned them all down on his behalf. The tour was already in shambles, I didn’t need him to get kicked off altogether. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Sofiane was frazzled, when he explained everything that was going on. We both knew Lucas wouldn’t want Eliott on our bus, and now we knew why, but it didn’t change the fact that Eliott didn’t deserve what Charles was doing to him. 

I told Yann to go to the big room on the back of the bus, the one that I usually slept in, and to take Lucas there, and to distract him long enough for us to get on the road. I knew he wouldn’t argue with me, even if he did take Lucas’ side in not wanting Eliott there.

**Yann Cazas:**

Fucking Charles. I don’t know what Manon saw in that asshole, I always thought she had more sense than that. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

It kind of hit me, in the morning, the gravity of what I’d done. I knew that Lucille was bound to find out about it, but we’d had such a lovely conversation the night before that I hadn’t wanted to bring it up. I especially didn’t want to bring Lucas into it, the less she knew about that the better.

When I came down from my hotel room to get back on the road, I was ready to have to bear some heat from Sofiane, maybe even from Imane, but I wasn’t ready for Sofiane to tell me Charles had pulled my band and my bus. Which meant that for the rest of the tour, I’d be living and breathing in the same spaces Lucas was, to a more extreme degree. And, I supposed I’d be performing acapella.

**Manon Demissy:**

All of a sudden Eliott was on our bus, and the bus was leaving, and Daphné was trying to find Imane, but she was talking to Sofiane, who was also on the bus. 

**Basile Savary:**

I had no idea what was going on, but I was glad to have Eliott with us! He was my only ally those days. Well, not really, but everyone was better friends with each other than with me, and no one was friends with him like they used to be, so I took advantage of that. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I didn’t waste energy caring that Eliott was travelling with us. 

**Emma Borgès:**

Lucas was going to flip his shit, but I was glad Eliott was with us. It seemed like that was how it was supposed to be, you know? He was an integral part to the tour, to all of our success to this point, truly. Without him and “Minute by Minute”, this tour wouldn’t exist, at least not in such a great capacity. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

If Lucas wasn’t freaking out, that meant Lucas didn’t know, which meant I either had to head him off or hide for when the explosion hit. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Yann and I were in Imane’s room for a while, he told me he wanted to talk through a song, so we did, but I didn’t know why that required privacy. Until I finally left the room, much to Yann’s chagrin, and I saw the chaos unfolding throughout the rest of the bus.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I hadn’t expected Lucas to be happy to see me, but I’d hoped that maybe things would have been less hostile after I’d sang “Sunshine Boy”. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Lucas’ face was red as a cherry tomato, but I stopped him before he could go on his angry tirade. I told him what Charles had done, and why Eliott was here. No one had acknowledged the fact that they knew about Lucas and Eliott’s history, or what Eliott had done at the last concert, and I wasn’t about to go there, but I think Lucas understood.

The minute I mentioned Charles’ name, all of his anger disappeared like that.

_ (Imane snaps) _

It was like Charles’ name was some sort of buzzword, for better or for worse. I didn’t understand Lucas’ reaction to his name or presence at all, but it was better than him decking Eliott in the face, so I decided not to question it. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Fucking Charles. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I don’t think anyone said a word the rest of the way. I think we were going to New Jersey, so it wasn’t terribly far away, but far enough for the silence to stretch into a deafening hum.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I just took a nap. Beat staring at Lucas and Eliott and wondering which of them was going to crack first.

**Manon Demissy:**

The silence extended to our arrival in New Jersey, and at our venue. Sofiane and Imane went to handle some of the logistics, the rest of us went to get changed and ready for the night backstage. We wouldn’t be staying over in Jersey because we only had one show there, then we were off to a new city the next night.

**Yann Cazas:**

Lucas broke the uneasy silence to tell us that we’d be playing “Minute by Minute” for the first time on tour. No one quite knew how to react, because we weren’t totally certain that he was being serious. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I may not have liked him at the moment, but I still loved him, stupid as it was. He had no band, and if he sucked, it would bring the rest of us down, so I figured we could be his band. If anything, it would just extend our set longer, and I always wanted more time on the stage.

**Manon Demissy:**

I didn’t realize Lucas meant that we were supposed to join forces with Eliott for the rest of the tour. Everyone looked like they knew something I didn’t but no one was telling me anything, so I just went with it.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I would have told Manon, but it wasn’t really up to me to let her know that Eliott was the person Lucas was hung up on. That was up to him, and he didn’t seem inclined to share, so she remained in the dark. Meanwhile, it took all of my willpower to not scream at her for spending time with Charles. I couldn’t believe she actually seemed to like him, I  _ wouldn’t _ believe it.

**Eliott Demaury:**

It was a solution, but not one I’d expected. The only problem was that this now meant I wouldn’t be able to leave without hearing Lucas sing. I didn’t know what any of the songs on  _ Minute by Minute _ were, at least aside from the ones I’d heard while Lucas and I were friends and more, so I didn’t know what it meant that Lucas wanted me on stage with them all. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I knew he hadn’t listened to our songs, and selfishly I wanted him to hurt as much as I had when I’d written a fair few of those songs. I wanted him to know the pain I was in, and that I had loved him, but love wasn’t enough at that moment, because I was weak. I was weak and in love with music more than I was in love with him and maybe that was wrong, but music had never walked out on me. Music had been my saving grace my entire life, the only thing that consistently showed me the care and love I so desperately sought. Even Manon had left me, in all the ways that mattered. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I was fielding calls all day from people who wanted to talk to, or about, Eliott. I tried to appease them, but some wouldn’t budge, so I just had to let those go. Many people were angry, but a fair amount were excited. They wanted him to be the face of the LGBTQ+ community, and I didn’t know how to respond to that, or if he’d even want that. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I was an observer that first night we joined with Eliott. I sang my parts, played my instruments, but all the while I was watching Lucas and Eliott like the ticking time bombs they were.

Eliott was fine all through his songs, and Lucas was off stage for the majority of them anyway, since he didn’t have any part in Eliott’s solo music. I was off with him too, for the most part, but there was some instrumental slack I needed to pick up. It was a good thing we all knew Eliott’s music like the back of our hands, otherwise that show probably would have been a disaster.

They decided to sing “Minute by Minute” first, to bridge the gap between songs. Eliott was allowed to leave the stage after that, but not the venue, so he would have to listen to Lucas singing about him for the rest of the night. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I think Lucas and Eliott both got lost in their own world when they sang MXM together live for the first time. Holy fuck. You could cut that sexual tension with a knife. Which was not, might I add, a very good thing, considering that Eliott had just come out to the world the night previously.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I told myself I wasn’t going to look at him, that I would sing the song and then I’d use the rest of the night to dig the knife of my pain into him and twist it around and around again.

But of course I looked at him. My eyes were drawn to his like a gravitational force, they always were. 

**Yann Cazas:**

“Minute by Minute” never really sounded like a love song until they sang it live together. Like, we had this whole Romeo and Juliet music video thing, but even then, the love song aspects were understated. Maybe it was because it was a supposed love story between Manon and Eliott and Daphné and Lucas instead of Lucas and Eliott, but it never hit quite the way it did in Jersey. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas was looking at me like I was the sun. I’d forgotten how it felt to be looked at like that. He always looked at me like that, even when I’d been in a depressive episode and hadn’t wanted to do anything other than sleep and occasionally use the bathroom.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott looked at me too, and when our eyes met, his went soft on the sides, and the corners of his mouth lifted ever so slightly. It was like we were the only two people alive, that’s how it always felt when he looked at me. Like there was nowhere he’d rather be looking. 

**Basile Savary:**

I almost thought they were gonna fuck right there on the stage.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

This was going to be a PR nightmare.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

The last few notes of the song faded, and the lights kicked back up, and I remembered where we were and what had happened between us. I said to the crowd, “Give a hand to Eliott Demaury!” and then I looked at him again, accidentally, and he looked at me, and I felt a pulse of energy so strong between the two of us I could hardly stand it, and then he turned and walked off stage. 

He didn’t love me, not anymore, I had to keep reminding myself. He had a model waiting for him at home, and he didn’t care how much I was hurting, because I’d hurt him first. Our set started, and I figured I’d make the most of Eliott hearing most of our songs for the first time. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I stood by the side of the stage the whole time, just watching. Lucas was so in his element up there, and the audience clearly agreed with me. He didn’t look back over at me for a while, and I wondered if he’d forgotten I was there.

The songs were great, incredible even. Some had come a long way since I’d first heard them, some were totally new to me. I sensed the tone shift just before it happened, because nearly everyone aside from Lucas started glancing over at me nervously. I didn’t know how they all knew he was singing about me, because I’d made sure not to make it obvious when I sang “Sunshine Boy”.

“Lie to Me” was first, and that one hit me like a punch in the gut. Lucas met my eyes as he sang the chorus, the last time through, and all I saw was pain behind them. What gave him the right, I thought, to sing that song, knowing full well that he was the reason we weren’t together? Little did I know, there was more to come.

“Run”. It was angry and it was lamentful and it was rock and roll with an alternative edge. And it was about me, again. I didn’t know Lucas felt that way about it all, I really didn’t. Maybe I should have listened to his songs earlier, but truthfully, I think it’s good that I waited. If I’d heard “Run” before I did, I might have been angry enough to quit the tour. I hadn’t wanted to hear Lucas’ side of things until then, and once I did hear them, I didn’t know what to do with them.

The last song of that mix, “To Be So Lonely” twisted the knife “Lie to Me” had stabbed me with and punctured my heart. 

_ “Don’t call me baby again / You got your reasons / I know that you're tryna be friends / I know you mean it / But don't call me "baby" again / It's hard for me to go home / Be so lonely…” _

I didn’t know  _ how _ to react, or respond. He missed me, he was jealous, and he was angry at me, for moving on and leaving him behind. I knew that it was likely that a few more of the songs had been about me as well, like “Lovers in the Moonlight” or “Can I Call You Tonight”, but those were clearly written during the height of infatuation. It felt great to hear them, but not once I found out what would be coming later. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I don’t think Eliott took the heartbreak hat trick very well, but I don’t really blame him.

**Emma Borgès:**

I know Yann was team Lucas, but I refused to choose a side since I didn’t necessarily know the details of what had gone down between the two of them, so Yann, Basile, and I treated Eliott to drinks after the Jersey show, because he seemed to be a bit in shock.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Drinking wasn’t what I should have been doing, but I wanted to do a whole lot worse, so it was good the three of them headed me off before I could make a terrible decision. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Daphné and Manon went out, and the rest of them were with Eliott, so I went back to the bus alone after the show. Imane and Sofiane were out too, but I think that had more to do with PR than anything else. I didn’t know if Imane had agreed to a date yet, but it was obvious to everyone that they were practically married already.

To my surprise, Arthur was back at the bus already when I got there.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I’d hoped Lucas would go out with Daphné, but of course not. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

He was crying, and I realized that I had no idea what he would be crying about. I’d been so wrapped up in my own head I hardly knew what was going on around me. Hell, if I hadn’t seen Yann and Emma during the first tour, I never would have known that something was happening between them. The only reason I still knew was because I’d learned to pay attention, and they were both unsubtle in subtle ways. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Sometimes, you just hold things in for so long that you spill them all out to the nearest person in a moment of weakness. That was what happened with Lucas and I that night. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I felt terrible that Arthur was going through that and hadn’t told any of us. Except for Manon, who apparently thought that it was fine for one of our band members to be going completely deaf with no plan for what they might do about it.

I wasn’t a doctor, obviously, but Arthur needed to see one as soon as possible. Even if they couldn’t help with his hearing loss, there had to be something they could do to ease his transition in some way, or at least give us more information. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I honestly hadn’t expected Lucas to listen. I’d never seen that side of him up close, and it made me realize why everyone he met fell a little bit in love with him.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I wanted him to know that I cared, that I was here for him, that he didn’t have to feel so alone. I knew what alone was, and I didn’t want that for anyone I cared about. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I think I joked about it being his turn to tell me what the hell was going on with him and Eliott. I wasn’t really being serious, but he told me anyway, the full story. Including why it ended and the role Charles had played. Charles reminded me of my dad, weaseling his way into anything good in people’s lives and tearing it apart.

I asked him if that meant he was gay, then, and he just laughed.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I only laughed because I couldn’t believe I’d launched into a full story of my torrid love affair with living greek god Eliott Demaury without first saying, “By the way, I’m gay.”

I told him that Daphné knew, but she was the only one, and he just winced and told me everyone knew. I won’t lie, I freaked a bit, but he said that “Sunshine Boy” and the way we’d performed “Minute by Minute” made it really obvious. That made sense, even if my heart was still threatening to burst.

**Emma Borgès:**

Eliott got super trashed, which we probably should have expected, and the three of us practically had to carry him home. I won’t say some of the things his drunk ass said, but I did advise him, afterward, that he needed to have a conversation with Lucille.

**Eliott Demaury:**

All I remember is going to the bar with them, for better or for worse.

**Basile Savary:**

Things were eerily calm for the next few weeks, before we went overseas. It might have been because we were all too scared to say things we already knew, or it might have been because we weren’t totally sure  _ what _ we knew, and both parties involved were completely fine with leaving us in the dark. 

Lucas and Arthur were closer than usual, closer than Arthur had been with anyone in a while. It made me sad, because that used to be Arthur and me. It should have been still, but he hadn’t wanted to talk to me, and I didn’t know how to force him to. It seemed Lucas handled that one, though, like he did everything except his own personal life.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I went to the doctor with Arthur, and they gave him some medication to take periodically to try to restore the hearing in his right ear. They said the left one didn’t have any hope left, because it had been too long. He still hadn’t told me what happened to make him lose his hearing in that ear, but I had a hunch. It made me sick to my stomach to think about, but I had a hunch.

**Arthur Broussard:**

So long as I could play music, I would be fine. I mean, I practically ran on muscle memory at that point, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I should have done something sooner, but I was scared, because I knew what they’d say about my left ear and I knew they’d chastise me for not coming in sooner. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wrote music with them all on the road. Usually when Lucas was sleeping or with Imane or something, because neither of us were ever going to write music together again, as far as we were concerned. I’d spoken to Lucille during that time, and she wasn’t happy with me. Obviously she’d heard the news, and Sofiane had me speak with a couple journalists to explain how I identified, in my own words, so people wouldn’t go about spouting assumptions. They did anyway, and most of them led back to me being ‘crazy’.

She still wanted to be with me, but I didn’t know for how long, so I convinced her to come out to one of our last shows in the states and I’d sing the song I’d written for her the last time I came to visit. The only problem was that I needed a second vocalist, and I knew Daphné wasn’t the right fit. I’d written the song with Lucas in mind, unknowingly.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott asked me to sing a new song with him, and my first instinct was  _ hell no _ . Then I felt bad, and I thought, maybe, just this once. Then I found out what, or rather  _ who _ , the song was about, and it went back to  _ hell no _ again.

**Eliott Demaury:**

It probably would have gone over better if I hadn’t told him the name of the song. It was “Valentine”, which was also Lucille’s last name.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I thought about it, more and more. I’d heard Eliott saying that she’d be coming to visit during our last show in the states, and a little petty part of me thought it would be hilarious if I, of all people, sang with Eliott on a song meant for his current love. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I told him not to do it, but when has Lucas ever done what he’s told to do?

**Arthur Broussard:**

“Valentine” was obviously supposed to be about Lucille, but you never would have guessed that on stage. They both started the song on opposite ends of said stage, looking everywhere but each other, and yet somehow by the end of the song, they were inches apart, facing one another in the middle of the stage. They were looking at each other so intensely, and I couldn’t tell if the intensity was borne of love or hate. Maybe both. 

**Basile Savary:**

I felt like I needed to throw water on them or something, just to snap them out of whatever was going on.

**Manon Demissy:**

Yeah, I got it. Though, no one else seemed surprised, so I wondered if that meant I was the last to know. It hurt to think that Lucas had felt more capable of talking about that with everyone else, that I hadn’t even crossed his mind. We might have been going through a rough stage of our relationship, but I’d always be there for him. I thought he knew that. 

I missed talking to him more than anything, and I honestly didn’t even know why I wasn’t. I didn’t want it to go on any longer, I wanted us to get back to where we’d always been, the Lallemissy twins taking on the world. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas told me to stay and sing for the rest of their set, and at first I thought he was extending an olive branch to me. Then, I realized the songs he’d be singing, and that his intention was not quite as good natured as it seemed from the surface.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I was mad at Lucas for letting Eliott take over my backing vocals on a bunch of the songs, but holy fuck. The heartbreak hat trick with both of them on vocals? I truly don’t even have the words to describe it.

**Yann Cazas:**

Everyone remembered that show for a very long time. I’m sure people still do now, I know I do. 

**Emma Borgès:**

Yann and I had an  _ amazing _ fuck after that show. I think the pheromones being released from Lucas and Eliott affected everyone, I was super horny after the show.

**Basile Savary:**

I missed Maria, I wished she was there with me. Technically no one other than me was in a relationship or seeing anyone, but I think Yann and Emma were fucking different people all the time, Arthur didn’t seem to be in the mood, Daphné got what she wanted when she wanted it, Manon had that weird thing with Charles going on, Imane and Sofiane were basically dating, and Lucas and Eliott and Lucille and Eliott had something going on that I decided to give up on trying to figure out.

I think we all felt alone in our own ways, actually, it was just a matter of what we did with that loneliness, how we filled the void. I filled it by calling Maria most nights, making sure she knew I loved her and that I couldn’t wait to see her again. She told me she was proud and couldn’t wait to see me too. It felt nice to have that with someone, even if, from the outside, it wasn’t as desirable as being Eliott Demaury and Lucille Valentine. I knew better, being Eliott and Lucille wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucille hated the song, though I think it was mostly about the way I performed it. She told me that I wasn’t allowed to talk to Lucas anymore, and when I asked her why she told me that she wasn’t stupid. Everyone knew about the two of us, she said. 

I panicked, for Lucas’ sake. I knew he didn’t want people knowing that he was gay, at least not yet, and I couldn’t understand where the rumors were coming from. The rest of the group told me that it was obvious to anyone who had ever been in a five mile radius of us, so I tried to tone it down going forward. I was in love with Lucille, I just probably should have taken more time between things ending with Lucas to be with her in a committed relationship.

I didn’t talk to Lucas much anyway, but I did what Lucille said, and I didn’t talk to him at all. Not as we flew across the world, not as we performed side by side, not as he would try to meet my eye sometimes, in the middle of a song, and I could see the hurt and confusion that rested there. 

He stopped having me perform with them, then stopped performing “Minute by Minute” at all. I didn’t blame him.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was making the best of a shitty situation, and giving the audience what they wanted. I was doing my job, and I was doing it well. If Eliott couldn’t do the same, I didn’t need him anymore. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

As much as I loved that I was back to singing more songs, Lucas and I didn’t have what Lucas and Eliott had, it was obvious. Thankfully, international fans didn’t care too much just yet because they’d only heard inklings of the “Sunshine Boy” fallout, and our shows were running really well.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Sofiane and I had a lot of time to talk while on the road or in the air. We didn’t want to concern ourselves with all of the band member’s drama unless absolutely necessary, so we mostly just let them live their lives while we talked about the futures of our clients. We both had the same idea of where to go once the tour was over, it was just a matter of framing it in a way that everyone would agree.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was moping a lot, and Arthur was moping a lot, so we decided to write some songs together to try to find some light in our funk. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Lyrics weren’t my strong suit, so I mostly just encouraged Lucas as he wrote songs. It was nice to feel a part of something again, though, in a way I hadn’t for a while. The medication I’d gotten seemed to be working, or at least nothing was getting worse, so I was in higher spirits for the most part. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I wrote “Man” because I was pissed at Eliott all the time and I wondered what his face would look like if I ever sang him that song. Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen, but I could dream. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Lucas gave me “Man” to sing as a solo, and even though it was pretty much the exact opposite of what I wanted, I figured I’d take as many songs as I could get. In exchange, I gave him “Holy”, which was kind of gay, but it wouldn’t sound so gay if he was singing it.

**Yann Cazas:**

Lucas was really good at pretending to be attracted to women, I’ll give him that.

**Manon Demissy:**

“Holy” was such a beautiful but also deeply sexy song. I won’t lie, I fantasized about Daphné singing it, because I knew it would fit her better than it did Lucas. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Of all the girls I was with over the years, none of them captured my heart in a way I wanted to write love songs about. None of them were Eliott, if I was Lucas. There was just Manon, who would never look at me the way I looked at her, so she didn’t really count.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I floated the idea Imane and I had by Eliott, and I saw the light in his eye. He told me no, because Lucille probably wouldn’t let him, and I asked if he was really going to let his girlfriend of the moment ruin his career. Maybe it was harsh, but she didn’t get to control who he was and what he did with his life, only he got to do that. And me, to a certain extent, because that was what managers were for.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Imane and Sofiane wanted me to join the band, full time. Lucas and I would write and sing the songs together for the next album and whatever came after that. It went against what Lucille had told me to do, even though in my heart I wanted it so badly. I loved everyone in the band, and making “Minute by Minute” had been one of the best times in my life.

I didn’t think Lucas would go for it, though, so there was that.

**Manon Demissy:**

Imane told me what they wanted to do, and I was surprised. I was sure that she and Sofiane had been just waiting for the tour and the tension to be over, not wanting to  _ add _ to it. I decided I had to talk to Lucas, finally, and just work things out so I could make a more informed decision on whether or not Eliott should join the band.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

After one of the shows in Paris, I was feeling particularly melancholy. My mom and I had always talked about going to Paris together, it was where her parents lived, maybe still did, but I didn’t know where they might be or how to reach them. The anniversary of her death had passed us by again, a few months before Paris, and I’d let Daphné and Eliott take most of our set that day. I didn’t feel up to it. Everyone had known to just give me space until it passed, but I had wished Manon had been by my side. I hated not talking to her, but I was as stubborn as she was, and I knew that neither of us were bound to break any time soon.

Then there was Paris, though, and while everyone went out to visit the city of love, Manon found me in my hotel room.

**Manon Demissy:**

I asked if it was ok that I was there, and he nodded, so I sat down on the chaise lounge. They really went all out with our accommodations everywhere we went, sometimes I liked it, and sometimes it all felt fake. I felt fake most of the time anyway. Lucas was perched on the windowsill, smoking a cigarette, looking out at the city.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t smoke, not like Eliott, who never seemed to stop, but I did every now and again. It reminded me of him, the way he tasted. Don’t bother calling me pathetic, I already know that I am.

**Manon Demissy:**

I asked him for a cigarette, and he looked so shocked he almost fell from the windowsill, which would not have been a good thing.

_ (Manon laughs) _

I hated smoking, still do, but it was a melancholic night, and it felt like the right thing to do. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I handed her a cigarette and a lighter, and she rested her head on my shoulder, and we watched as the stars found their places in the sky. Neither one of us spoke for a long time, but we didn’t need to.

**Manon Demissy:**

We both apologized at the same time, then admitted we didn’t even know what we were apologizing for anymore. I wanted my brother back, and he wanted his sister back, it was as simple as that. He told me everything that had happened with Eliott, aside from why they’d broken up. I asked, but he told me that they just didn’t have a future with one another, which was obviously bullshit.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I couldn’t tell her what had happened with Charles, I was still so ashamed of it. I’d only told Arthur because he’d spilled all his deepest secrets to me and I’d felt like I needed to do the same in return. Manon asked me if I was still in love with Eliott and I answered her honestly. I told her I didn’t know. Some days I felt like my heart would burst the minute I saw his face, and I would dream of nights spent laying beside him in bed, two souls becoming one. Other days I would despise the sight of him, and I would think about how he found Lucille not even a month after what we had was gone, so he couldn’t have loved me much at all. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I’d never been in love, never even wanted anything to do with it, but the way Lucas spoke and the way he wrote music was so multidimensional that when I was around him, I wanted to experience something filled with the same beauty, same disaster.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

She told me she didn’t believe in love, and I told her I hadn’t either. It sounded so stupid when I said it, I knew that it did, but I told her that I didn’t believe in love until I woke up one morning and the light was filtering in through the window, bathing Eliott in golden light, and I thought to myself,  _ this is how I want the rest of my life to be _ .

She also told me what Imane and Sofiane were talking about, and I took a minute to respond to that one.

**Manon Demissy:**

I really hadn’t intended on telling him yet, but how could I not? The Lallemissy twins didn’t have secrets, and they always had each other’s backs. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

From a business standpoint, it was a great idea. And I’d had the best experience writing “Minute by Minute”, I really had. I wasn’t one for collaboration, but collaborating with Eliott felt different, it felt right. But there was also the fact that he wasn’t talking to me at all, and I decided it wasn’t worth my time to try with him either, and that didn’t make for a good songwriting duo. Still, it was really starting to feel like there was no Seven Minutes in Heaven without him.

The next morning I told Imane that I’d say yes, if she asked to have Eliott join the band in a full capacity. I didn’t know whether I would regret it or not, but I hoped I wouldn’t.

**Basile Savary:**

Of course I said yes, I loved having Eliott around. We got a lot closer during the MXM tour, and I felt like he balanced us all out in some ways.

**Yann Cazas:**

I didn’t have anything against him, and I knew he made us better, so I said yes, hoping that Lucas wouldn’t be too mad at me.

**Emma Borgès:**

I said yes. Eliott was rad and everyone wanted him performing with us all the time anyway, might as well make it official.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I said no. Eliott was already taking over my role in the band, if he was there full time there would be no reason for me to be there. No one even seemed to have thought of that. It hurt, it really did.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I said no, because I didn’t want everything to become the Lucas and Eliott show. I mean, it was mostly the Lucas show, but people still paid attention to the rest of us, because Lucas wasn’t  _ completely _ a one man machine on stage. With Eliott, though, they were the only two people in the world. The rest of us didn’t matter when they were on stage together. I wanted to matter. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I really wanted it to be unanimous, but Daphné and Arthur weren’t budging, even after I told them Lucas agreed to it.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Of course Lucas agreed to it, he might have hated Eliott, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still in love with him underneath it all. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I thought Lucas had seen me for who I was, a mirror of him in some ways. Turned out I meant as little to him as I’d thought when I originally joined the band. After more shows, and constant badgering from Imane, I finally gave in. I figured I was the only one standing in the way of their plans, so I just sucked it up and gave away some of my dreams.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I finally decided it was more worth it to make the most of what I had than stop the future in its tracks, so I agreed to let Eliott into the band. Wasn’t the best decision I ever made.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Sofiane told me all of them had agreed to it. All of them, including Lucas. I was so happy, I felt like I finally had a family, one who wanted me and cared about me in a way I hadn’t really been cared about in my life. Idriss is the exception, of course. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

We decided to wait to announce it until after the tour was over, maybe around the release of a single or something, to drum up hype for their next album, but Eliott joined the band back on stage more and more again.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I debuted “Cherry” with some flipped pronouns after Eliott was officially in the band, on stage with me. I wanted him to know that this didn’t change the way he’d hurt me. That I’d hurt him, too. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

“Cherry” was too much for me. I couldn’t understand why he kept writing these songs about how I’d done him wrong when he was the one who killed what we had. It wasn’t my fault for moving on.

**Emma Borgès:**

Things were going too well. We were nearly done with the tour, the time had flown by, most of it fun, at least for me, but things seemed too quiet. Everyone knew Eliott and Lucas weren’t talking, but it wasn’t the same sort of ‘not talking’ as before, filled with bitterness and regret. This was just disappointment and acceptance, like they’d mutually agreed to never speak again, and even if it hurt them, they decided that was the way it had to be. Then “Cherry” happened, and Eliott seemed mad again, so Yann and I decided to stage an intervention.

**Yann Cazas:**

We locked them in the dressing room backstage after one of our shows. Not my finest moment, but I think we were all beyond sick of their shit and soon it was going to explode in everyone’s faces. They at least needed to pretend to play nice, for our next album’s sake.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It was the first time we’d been alone together in I don’t even know how long. Maybe since we broke up, if broke up is the right word for it. I couldn’t look him in the eye.

**Eliott Demaury:**

He couldn’t look me in the eye. I didn’t know that that meant.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

He suddenly just asked me “Why?”

I had no idea what he was referring to, it could have been a great many things. Instead of answering, I mustered up the courage to look up at him.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I asked why he’d written those songs, with those words, when he knew they were all bullshit. He’d never loved me, and he had no right to pretend that he was the one left broken hearted.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I realized then that I’d never told him that I loved him. It had been on my mind constantly for more than a year, but I’d never said the words to him out loud. Was that the reason he’d accepted my ‘break up’ with him so easily? Had he really thought all along that I was acting the way I was because I had never actually loved him?

**Eliott Demaury:**

He looked so stunned. I didn’t know why. What had I said that wasn’t true?

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I couldn’t tell him how I felt without telling him the truth of it all, but why was I even keeping it a secret anymore anyway? He’d moved on completely, the only person it was continuing to hurt now was me.

**Eliott Demaury:**

He took a big deep breath, and then he said to me, “I haven’t stopped loving you since that morning I woke up in bed next to you and you looked at me like I was something brighter than the sun. I knew it was love, because when I thought about doing that every morning, my heart started to beat a little bit faster, and I was no longer afraid.”

What the hell was I supposed to say to that?

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I started rambling. I told him what I told Manon, about when and how I’d known I loved him, about Charles finding out, and about what Charles threatened. About why I had to end things before they ended us, and the people we cared about.

I didn’t expect him to understand, because I knew that he would rather have gone to hell than let Charles ruin his life, but I was weak. I was a coward, I always have been, and love wasn’t enough to change that at the time.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Charles. Again. The reason for all the pain I’d gone through over the past year or so. It wasn’t entirely surprising to me that he was homophobic, I’d pretty much figured that out through his reaction to “Sunshine Boy”, but going to these lengths? It was deplorable. Seven Minutes in Heaven was easily the most famous and successful artist or group of artists represented by Shame, and were quickly becoming some of the most popular artists in the world. Charles never would have gone through with what he said, but he needed Lucas quiet, so he preyed on the one thing Lucas loved more than anything: his music.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I started crying, during my rambling, then Eliott was so quiet for so long that I freaked out even more. I just began apologizing, over and over again, and I couldn’t stop. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas’ words were barely distinguishable, but I could tell that he was saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over again. I don’t know when it shifted, but suddenly I decided he had nothing to be sorry for. Though I wished he’d told me sooner, I know why he didn’t. I would have fought him on it, if he told me, I would have said fuck Charles, fuck them all, if we were happy that was all that mattered. And he probably would have agreed, and maybe we wouldn’t be halfway across the world at that moment planning out our next steps to reach the stars. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

All of a sudden he was hugging me. My snotty, sobbing face was pressed into his chest, and his arms were wrapped tightly around me, and his head was resting on top of mine, and he said that  _ he _ was sorry.

It felt like when I’d shown up at his door the first time we’d fought and I’d held him like the only safe place in the world was my arms. 

I melted into the embrace, and there we stayed, long enough for me to remember that this wasn’t right, that he had a girlfriend and I was no longer the person in his life he could hold close like a lover.

**Eliott Demaury:**

He shot back like a bullet, a name on his tongue.

Lucille. 

I didn’t know what to say, so when he asked if I loved her, I said that I had to. It felt like it anyway, like I didn’t really have a choice in the matter sometimes. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Saying you have to love someone shows that you’ve had the privilege of never questioning that love. Maybe it meant that she was his soulmate, after all. Maybe they were meant to be together forever.

**Eliott Demaury:**

There Lucas was, saying he loved me, and there I was, saying I had to love someone else.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I don’t know what kind of answer I wanted, obviously Eliott wasn’t going to ditch her because it had taken me a year to say that I’d fucked up and I loved him still through it all. I didn’t expect that from him, or want it, even.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I asked him what he wanted me to say, and he told me he didn’t want anything. Or, at least, he didn’t know what he wanted. He asked me if Lucille was my forever. I told him I didn’t know, because I didn’t. I was twenty-four, I had no idea what forever even meant.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t want to move on. All the guys I’d been with over the course of the tour, and not one of them had made me feel the way Eliott did, like every star in the universe was bursting out of my chest encapsulating us in a universe entirely of our own making, where we could be together forever and do what we loved and be with the people we loved and everything was possible and nothing hurt. 

I also didn’t want to be ‘the other man’, so to speak. Cheating was one of the worst things someone could do, in my opinion, and I wasn’t going to be a part of that, even if it led to my happiness. 

He asked me what this all meant for us. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

He told me we’d take it minute by minute, then he looked away from me, with one of those smiles he crafted especially for me, and banged on the door for Yann and Emma to let us out, and that was that. 

**Basile Savary:**

Eliott and Lucas weren’t friends again, and they definitely weren’t boning, but something had changed. 

**Manon Demissy:**

The rest of the tour flew by, filled with a million different emotions. Daphné, Emma, and I had some amazing times on stage with “Seashore” and I was beginning to feel like I’d rediscovered my place in the world. Lucas was Lucas, but at least he was my brother again in all the ways that mattered. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott and I weren’t talking, but we weren’t not talking. We were both thinking, mostly. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucille was calling me nearly every day, despite the international costs, and I was avoiding most of those calls. When I didn’t, we were fighting, and she was accusing me of things I hadn’t done and treating me like I was broken. Maybe I was, but that wasn’t for her to decide.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I had a long talk with Baz, one of the final weeks of the tour, and I told him everything that had been going on with me. He listened without interrupting, though I could read his thoughts plain as day on his face. I knew he blamed himself for not seeing that something was wrong, but it wasn’t like I wasn’t well practiced in the art of keeping secrets. He told me that he wanted to propose to Maria after the tour, and asked if that sounded crazy. I told him to go for it, we only lived once, and life wasn’t always what we expected, so it was best to make the good parts last as long as possible. 

Talking to Baz felt like finding a limb I’d been missing. He was my brother, in the same way that Yann was to Lucas. We weren’t quite at the Lallemissy level, of course but I liked Broussavary anyway. It had a better ring than Cazallemant or Lallemazas or whatever they would have been. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

And just like that, the tour was over. And we were on hiatus for who knew how long. It had been over a year, it was weird to think we wouldn’t be doing this every night for at least another year. It was also 1985, somehow. When had that even happened?

**Imane Bakhellal:**

When we got back, Sofiane asked me out again. This time, I said yes. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I was so not expecting her to say yes, and when she did I nearly passed out. I would have celebrated with someone, but my only option was Idriss, and I didn’t think he’d be super into that. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Basile told us he was moving out, and we were all shocked, except Arthur. We knew that things with him and Maria were serious, but we didn’t think they were  _ moving in _ serious. He asked if we were seriously all still going to be staying in the same apartments we’d moved into five years ago, and I think it only then struck me that it had been five years. Why were we still living where we did? 

**Emma Borgès:**

I mean, I kind of wanted a fancy ass house with a pool and whatnot, but I liked living with Manon and Daphné. And having the boys next door. Still, we had more money than we knew what to do with, so I kept options open. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I let Charles take me out when I got back to LA. No one knew about it, and I didn’t intend on telling them. Even Lucas. I didn’t think it would mean anything, I was mostly just humoring him, but it wasn’t awful. He always made it feel like he knew me better than I knew myself.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I went to the doctor again, once we were home, and asked about my options for the future. The medication I’d gotten during the tour had worked for a while, but I was worried I’d get back to where I was before, and I couldn’t live my life as a musician like that. I also couldn’t live the life I wanted without being a musician, so I had to do something. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I thought about coming out, how I wanted to do it and what impact it might have. Everyone other than Charles, Sofiane, and Imane knew by that point, and I just wanted it out there. I wanted to write a love song for a girl on the next album and not have to change the pronouns, I wanted to be there to show other girls that they didn’t have to do what men told them to do, or love people just because society dictated that it had to be that way. I wanted to live like Alexia, full of pride and a lust for life. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I got shitfaced, one night, because I was planning on breaking up with Lucille and I didn’t know how to tell her sober. It wasn’t necessarily because of Lucas, but it did have to do with him in some ways. I felt like what I had with Lucille had run its course, and a lot of it had been great, but nothing had been like the feeling Lucas described to me, of what loving me had felt like to him. I think I got so swept up in being able to love out loud that I let that loudness drown out what I wanted in a relationship. 

I knew I shouldn’t have done it, but alcohol was the only thing I could think of to soothe whatever was going on in my mind and give me the courage to do what I knew in my heart I needed to do. 

Lucille was not pleased about it, not one bit. I hadn’t told her about my mental illness, mostly because I didn’t know how she’d react, and looking back I’m glad I didn’t. She had her way of wheedling into my mind and sometimes I didn’t mind it but sometimes it just expounded all the bad things I’d been feeling into an all encompassing spiral.

The night I broke up with her, she told me I’d be back because I didn’t know how to be alone. She said that I was the kind of person who needed someone constantly, because I was desperately seeking the validation I’d lacked as a child and I’d go to any lengths to secure it. That was why, she told me, I had this ‘fascination’ with boys as well as girls. Because I was so starved of love that I’d look for it in anyone and anything.

She slammed the door in my face, and I just ran, to the only place I could think of. Because I knew that part of what she had said was right. I genuinely had interests in multiple genders, but part of that probably did come from needing love and not knowing how to find it. It was the terror of being left alone with my thoughts that had driven me since my diagnosis. I’d lied to myself after Camille and said I was done with love, but it wasn’t even Lucas that changed that for me, it was the fact that I needed that assurance that someone would love me despite everything. It wasn’t the healthiest thought process, but the stigma around mental illness and the people affected was so strong it suffocated me sometimes back then.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott showed up at my door soaking wet and half drunk. Or maybe fully drunk, I couldn’t tell. It hadn’t been raining, so I didn’t know why he was soaking, but I invited him in to dry off because I was so stunned that I didn’t know what else to do.

For some reason, the rest of the boys were out. Basile was with Maria, Yann was probably with Emma but pretending he wasn’t, and Arthur had taken up some of my old habits with one night stands, so I didn’t expect him back any time soon.

**Eliott Demaury:**

A car sped through a puddle while I was walking to his place and it drenched me head to toe. Not my best night by a long shot.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Without preamble, he told me he broke up with Lucille. My heart stopped. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

He just looked at me, face blank as a wall, and said, “Why are you telling me this?”

Why was I telling him? Because I was drunk, yes, and because he was there, yes, but also because he was Lucas. And he was— he was everything. He’d tried to protect me even when he knew I’d probably hate him for it, he hadn’t stopped loving me all the time I’d been loving someone else. 

Was I still in love with him, when I showed up there? I don’t know, honestly. I don’t want this to come across as a dismissal of Lucille, because I truly wasn’t just thinking about Lucas the entire time we were together. If we hadn’t been on tour together, I’m sure I would have thought about him less and less until I barely thought of him at all. 

But as it was, with the new information he’d given me, and with the break up with Lucille, and her words that had hit a little too close to home, and because I was a little drunk, I said something stupid. 

I didn’t think about how it wasn’t technically legal, or where we would go and how it would happen, I just asked without thinking because it was all I wanted at that moment in time.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

He looked at me, so earnestly, and said, “Because I want to marry you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next time: track 7: polaris - spring 1985 to fall 1987
> 
> heres the playlist i made of some of the 'unreleased' songs: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0NudhosXvaSZu3fF6dp8Yl?si=iff9ZbaXRH2ZYZyInxgsqg
> 
> and you can find "sunshine boy" on my tumblr: @kieunora
> 
> your comments always make my week, so if you feel so inclined, i always appreciate it <33
> 
> as always, stay safe and healthy ❤️


	7. Track 7: Polaris - Spring 1985 to Fall 1987

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to make up for the two week wait, here's another 35k chapter (sorry and not sorry 😅)
> 
> so the songs for "polaris" all have different titles than the songs on the playlist, but that’s just because i’m dumb and wanted the song titles to match the episode titles of s3 of skam france 🤓. we out here pretending the songs on the playlist have the titles i wrote down instead of the ones listed on spotify uwu
> 
> love u all and hope u enjoy!! this one is For The Gays!!! 
> 
> tw: manic episode, depressive episode, emotional abuse/manipulation, ableism, brief mention of violence, disordered eating, non graphic suicide attempt, sexual assault (also non graphic, basically what happens in s2)

_ Just as Seven Minutes in Heaven’s future was secure as ever, each individual member was dealing with their own personal chaos. Lucas Lallemant was trying to close a chapter of his life that we wasn’t sure was entirely written yet, Manon Demissy was caught between her head and her heart, Daphné Lecomte wanted nothing more than to share who she was with the world, but was uncertain of the consequences, Yann Cazas was falling for someone that may not have been falling back, Emma Borgès was struggling with who she was outside of her life in the world famous band, Arthur Broussard was feeling increasingly caught between two worlds, Basile Savary was realizing that rockstar life wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and Eliott Demaury had just made a proposal— literally. On top of all of it, expectations for their next album were higher than ever. The only question was whether they would soar as they always had, or fall from their place up in heaven.  _

**Lucas Lallemant (lead singer, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

Eliott asked me to marry him, and I said no. 

I didn’t know if he was just asking because he was drunk, or if I was a rebound to his rebound, but I said no. I wanted to say yes more than anything, even though I knew that, technically, same sex marriage wasn’t legal anywhere in the world. I wanted to say yes, but I said no, because I didn’t think— or want to allow myself to think— that he meant it.

Then we all went on a hiatus over the summer to unwind after the tour and prepare for our next album, and I didn’t hear from Eliott Demaury for five months. 

**Manon Demissy (lead guitarist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I started dating Charles during our hiatus. I told no one, and I told myself that it was because he was technically my boss, and I didn’t want that to be misconstrued, but it was really because I knew what they’d all say, and that they’d have talked sense into me.

I grew into being an ‘it girl’, because Charles encouraged it. I felt less and less like myself every day and I didn’t even notice it because I was wrapped up in silk and putting on a show. 

**Basile Savary (rhythm guitarist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

Maria and I looked at places, and we found one pretty quickly. It was a nice house in a wealthy neighborhood that was probably too big for us but I could afford it and I felt a little bit smug about it. Like, I don’t really think it hit me until then that we were actually celebrities, in some sense of the word. I got recognized everywhere I went and while it was fun at first, it got to be a bit much after a while. I didn’t mind when we were on tour, because it made sense to be recognized when we were singing sold out shows across the globe every night. I  _ did  _ mind when I was picking up ice cream at the store for my girlfriend and there were at least ten people watching my every move. 

I still wanted to propose, but finding a way to go out and get a ring discreetly was becoming increasingly difficult. I didn’t want the news to find out before I had a chance to ask her, and I didn’t want her to have to deal with the paparazzi and lack of privacy like I had to. 

**Arthur Broussard (drummer, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I went out most nights, and when I wasn’t out I was back home with Lucas. It didn’t really feel like home anymore, though, without Baz. We were back in a good place, and we still obviously hung out often, but it wasn’t the same. Sometimes I had the feeling that, while we were still a band, we weren’t a family anymore. 

Lucas was a zombie, and at first I thought it was because Imane had told him he wasn’t allowed to write for the album until the end of summer, but it became clear very quickly that wasn’t the case. Eliott had up and left out of nowhere, something Lucas either knew something about or knew nothing about. I didn’t know which option was worse. 

**Yann Cazas (bassist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I was falling in love with Emma. I was aware that I’d promised not to, on many occasions— practically every time we fucked, actually— but we all knew this was coming, let’s be real. I’d been a little bit in love with her since the first moment I met her, it was only a matter of time before it happened for real. 

During hiatus, we spent a lot of time together, just the two of us. It wasn’t just to fuck either, we went out and did things and stayed up at night stargazing and went out to dinner at fancy restaurants. To anyone else, the things we did might have been dates, but I never got that vibe from Emma’s end. I let it happen, though, because I was too far gone to do any different. 

**Emma Borgès (keyboardist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

It wasn’t that I didn’t like Yann like that. I did, as much as I tried not to. It was just that I was realizing I had no idea who I was outside of him and outside of the band. Each one of them, my bandmates, were so distinct in who they were I could have spotted them from Mars. But I was just… there.

**Daphné Lecomte (background vocalist and percussionist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I finally came out to Imane. She was way more surprised than I’d expected, but she also took it better than I’d expected. I mean, Lucas was mostly out to everyone in our circle, even if it was in a somewhat unofficial capacity, and Eliott was out to everyone as well, but it was still scary for me, even if I knew in my heart of hearts that Imane wouldn’t care for me any less. 

I also told her that I wanted to come out publicly, but she put the kibosh on it, at least for our hiatus period. Apparently Charles had been making a big fuss about adding Eliott to our band and she didn’t want to add fuel to the fire. We were pretty much invincible at that point, in Shame’s eyes, but Charles was still a wildcard from time to time. 

**Imane Bakhellal (manager, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I felt horrible that I’d had to tell Daphné to stay in the closet, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I had all of their best interests at heart, always, and I didn’t want them to lose everything they worked for because the head of the record label they were signed to was a massive egotistical bigoted asshole. Things were also precarious because Eliott was, for lack of a better word, missing. 

**Sofiane Alaoui (manager, Eliott Demaury):**

I stayed on to manage Eliott, officially, but in reality Imane and I were pretty much co managers of the eight of them. I knew Eliott better than almost anyone, and I never would have let Imane deal with all of them alone anyway, so it just made sense.

Unfortunately, I had no idea where he was, and I didn’t know how to contact him to make sure that he was alive, at the very least. I was taking it with a much more level head than Idriss, who was freaking out ninety nine percent of the time.

**Idriss Bakhellal (actor,** **_Life is Now_ ** **):**

Of course I was freaking the fuck out. There was one night, shortly after the tour, that he came home drunk and soaking wet, and when I asked him what the hell was going on, he just looked right through me like he hadn’t heard a word I’d said. I was worried then, but not worried enough. A few weeks later, he didn’t come home and the only thing I could find out was that he’d used his credit card to book a flight to Paris.

I didn’t want to snoop, but it was the only way I could explain anything, and when I saw that he hadn’t been taking his meds for at least a few weeks, probably since the night he’d come home drunk. That was not a good sign. I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, because I didn’t totally know how mental illness worked, or what the effects of him not taking his meds would be, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and decided he’d gone to Paris to visit his parents. 

**Eliott Demaury (singer,** **_Le Premier_ ** **and** **_Polaris_ ** **):**

I had a manic episode. I took Lucille to Paris and I married her there in a private ceremony and then we went to Italy and rented the penthouse suite of one of the most extravagant hotels we could find and we stayed there for five months. My episode didn’t last that long, of course, only long enough for me to decide that I needed to marry her and spend inordinate amounts of money to build a life in Italy, of all places, but when I came down from it the damage was already done.

I was too ashamed to call anyone back home, and I didn’t want Lucille to feel used, like she was just a whim I’d had. 

I wasn’t manic when I’d asked Lucas to marry me, just drunk and lonely. It was awful of me, to ask him that when I’d spent the entire last year falling in love with someone while he watched and pretended it didn’t hurt him in deep and irrevocable ways. 

I had to tell Lucille, after, about my mental illness, but I waited as long as I could. The come down from my mania didn’t hit me as hard and fast as usual, I eased into it and Lucille took my depression as laziness until I came out of it. She wanted to tell the world, and I wanted anything but that. It wasn’t even about what Lucas would think, seeing that I’d married her weeks after I’d asked the same of him, it was about my hopelessness and regret. Not that I’d gone to her, but that I’d done something so monumental while I wasn’t entirely in the right state of mind to do it, and now I had to tell her I didn’t mean it. I didn’t want to break her heart if at all possible. 

So, instead of telling her, I just let it happen. I decided that being married didn’t really  _ have _ to mean anything had changed, it was just that we’d been dating, we’d broken up, and we’d gotten back together. Those things happened. I didn’t think I could trust my own feelings, so I left it up to Lucille to do that for me.

Lucille decided she wanted to have a baby, was the thing, and I thought,  _ why not _ . Which, obviously, was not a reason to bring a child into the world. I had no business trying to become a father, I barely knew how to manage myself. If we were discussing that, though, it meant I really needed to tell her about my then titled manic depressive disorder, just so that we’d have no secrets between us. For the most part.

I told her about two months into the time we were in Italy. Coincidentally, that was when she decided having kids could wait. I was too relieved to think about why.

It started slowly, after that, a comment here, a comment there, until I was so insecure of this part of myself that I felt like Lucille was the only one who could ever forgive me and love me in spite of it. 

I know now that wasn’t how it should have been, but manipulation comes in different forms, sometimes masqueraded as love.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I found out that Eliott was in Italy from, of all people, Camille Pierrot. Yeah, I know.

_ (Idriss laughs) _

It was the first and last time I was happy to hear from her. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

We ran into Camille entirely randomly, at the hotel we were staying slash living in. It was weird to see her again, not only because of how drastically my life had changed since we broke up, but also because I was the somebody now. Her last album had tanked and people were losing interest. They wanted to know why she wasn’t making music like  _ Amour _ anymore. I knew why, but I was over it by then. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Camille called and told me she’d met Eliott and his wife in Italy, and that she was worried about him. That made two of us. I got the number for the hotel they were staying at from her, and I called Eliott fully intending to chew him out. I had no idea why he was there or what Camille meant by  _ wife _ .

**Eliott Demaury:**

Hearing from Idriss was unexpected, to say the least. I felt like a child being scolded by his parents, and probably rightfully so. I’d been too ashamed to let anyone know where I was or what I’d done, and the thought of having to return to any of that was terrifying to me. 

He told me I had until August to figure out what the hell I was going to tell everyone else, but then he’d come over and drag me back himself. I just agreed, because it was easier than arguing. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I moved into my own place too, after the tour. I got sick of Arthur and Yann coming home to find me wallowing in whatever the hell I was feeling. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d made a horrible mistake, saying no to Eliott, and that things were about to blow up in my face. If anyone knew where he was, they didn’t tell me, which I don’t know whether to be pissed or grateful about. 

I wanted to move in with Manon, but apparently she’d found her own place. She was acting weirder than I was, and I didn’t know why. She never cared much for fame and fortune, less so than the rest of us, but all of a sudden she was always in the spotlight even when she was buying groceries and she didn’t appear to want the attention to stop. The place she bought was ridiculously expensive, it looked like the type of place someone like Charles would buy. That probably should have been a red flag, but I didn’t think anything of it. 

Moving in somewhere on my own was a fine idea, but as much as I liked to isolate, I was growing into knowing that wasn’t what was best for me. I needed a roommate, I just didn’t need three, or six if you counted the girls right next door. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I moved in with Lucas. Daphné from high school never ever would have thought that would happen, but we were both kind of excited about it. I was sick of living in the same cramped space, Manon had her own place, and Emma was never around, so I figured it was time to move on to something different.

It was also nice that we both knew most of each other’s secrets, there was no tiptoeing or walking on eggshells around Lucas. 

We rented a decent sized four bedroom right on the beach, because if we weren’t going to splurge on an excess of space, we figured we could splurge on location. That wasn’t to say we had a ‘small’ space, though, it was probably bigger than either of us needed it to be, but we each needed space for instruments and such, hence the two extra bedrooms. We designated one room the writing space, and one room the creating space. Even though we were on the beach, we had an infinity pool in the backyard and Lucas spent so much time out there, watching the sky. 

Sometimes I was worried he’d drown in there, so lost in thought he forgot he couldn’t breathe underwater. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Daphné was a great roommate. More or less, we kept to ourselves, but sought each other’s company when we needed it. Both of us were pretty good at cooking, but I did most of it. It helped me take my mind off things, sometimes. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Manon was ignoring me. I didn’t know if it was intentional or not, but it made me panic. I thought that maybe she’d caught wind of my feelings for her and this was her way of saying I wasn’t worth it. She was hanging out with new friends all the time, or so it seemed, and they all looked the same.

Tall, skinny, long wavy hair, and matching red lipstick. It was  _ her _ thing, I wanted to argue, they were just copycats. But I couldn’t, because I didn’t fit that image, so I wasn’t there. Unconsciously, I decided to try my best to fit that image, but the only thing I could really control was my body, so that was what I did. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I didn’t like any of the people I was hanging out with. I don’t even remember their names. I wanted to be hanging out with Daph and Emma, or Lucas, or the other boys, but Charles didn’t want that, so I didn’t do that. His older brother spent a lot of time with us too. Nico. He… I don’t want to talk about him yet, if that’s ok? 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I would have moved out too, but I had the place to myself. Technically, Yann was still living there too, but he was off with Emma at her place every night, so I was free to do whatever I wanted. Alexia would come over a lot, now that Lucas was gone, because she was always good for conversations and mischief. We tried our luck together one night, because we were both a little drunk and in the mood, but we barely got past second base before deciding that we were better as friends.

**Alexia Martineau (producer,** **_Fifteen Minutes of Fame_ ** **,** **_Le Premier_ ** **,** **_Minute by Minute_ ** **, and** **_Polaris_ ** **):**

Arthur helped me dye my hair. I’d had pink for their first album, blue for their second, so I figured it was time for a change for the new era. I debated purple, but decided to go back to my natural color instead. I used my hair, my clothes, my eccentricity in the past to cover up the parts of me that I was insecure about, but I didn’t need that anymore. I’d produced three of the most popular albums in the last five years, and I basically had Charles Munier eating out of my hand. Well, almost. I didn’t need to be anyone but myself anymore. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

We dyed  _ my _ hair purple, because Alexia had purple dye, and I was high enough that I thought it was the best idea in the world. It wasn’t, purple probably wasn’t my color, but it faded enough by the time summer was over to look more lavender than violet, which I didn’t mind.

**Yann Cazas:**

Wow, I forgot about Arthur’s purple hair. That was something none of us had been expecting, but he rocked it. It also taught us that Arthur and Alexia were not a duo to be trusted alone together. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

Convincing Arthur to dye his hair purple will always be my biggest accomplishment.

**Emma Borgès:**

I kind of wished I’d been there, some of those nights. I wanted to live outside of my not relationship with Yann, and Arthur was finally coming back out of his self-imposed isolation, so I wanted to be there when he emerged fully. We weren’t the closest of everybody, but I always felt a bond with Arthur I didn’t for some of the others.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I felt like I’d taken Lucas’ place in the dynamic trio that used to be Emma, Yann, and Lucas. Now that Lucas and Daphné were living together, they didn’t hang out with the rest of us very often. Manon didn’t either, but none of us really knew what was going on with her either. Every time I tried to ask Emma about it, she seemed upset, so I assumed she knew even less than we did.

**Manon Demissy:**

Charles convinced me that I was better off without my friends, for the most part. They were more than that, they were my family, but I let myself forget that, forget myself. I hated my house too, but it was great for parties, and that was all anyone cared about. 

Lucas and I would talk on the phone sometimes, and he would ask me if I was happy. I always said yes, and I think he always knew it was a lie. The problem was that I told myself it was true so often I started to believe it. 

The only part of myself I hadn’t compromised was my body, because I lied and told Charles I was waiting until marriage for sex. I could feel the leash he had me on tightening every day, but I felt like this was my one ticket to escaping becoming his trophy girlfriend. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

It was near the end of the summer, when we all found out that Manon was with Charles. It made a lot of things make more sense, at least to me, and it made most of us sick to our stomachs. Lucas took it the hardest of all of us, which was understandable. 

I don’t think Manon knew what Charles had put Lucas through, otherwise I knew she would rather have drowned him in her mile long pool than dated him. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Manon and I’s relationship had just gotten back on track, but I couldn’t pretend everything was ok when it wasn’t. I told her I needed space from us for a little while, when I found out about her and Charles, and I could tell she was hurt and wondering why, but I couldn’t tell her. She told me she was happy every time we spoke, and I didn’t want to take that away from her like Charles had done to me. 

I should have seen beyond the blank smiles and pleasantries, though. I should have assumed he was being the same manipulative asshole with her as he was with the rest of us. I blame myself for a lot of what she went through, because she needed me, but I was too blind and stubborn to see it. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Manon and Charles dating was a twist I hadn’t seen coming, and I prided myself on being ready for anything at that point. Of course, I hadn’t been ready for Eliott to fuck off to Italy either, but at least I knew his status via Idriss. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I was flabbergasted to hear that he’d married Lucille. I didn’t want to assume anything, because the last time I had I’d made Eliott feel like I didn’t trust him or see him beyond his mental illness, so I kept my curiosities to myself. I also assumed that he couldn’t have been manic for five months, but the thought that he would do something like that anyway was worrying to me. He had seven people counting on him now, not including me or Imane, it wasn’t a one man show anymore.

Other than the Eliott fiasco, my hiatus was nice. Imane and I started dating, after she finally agreed to go out with me at the end of the tour. I liked her a lot, maybe even loved her, but I was willing to go at whatever pace worked for her. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Sofiane was and  _ is _ the best man I’ve ever known. I’d been scared to let someone in like that, but I never had to be scared of Sofiane. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

The anniversary of my mom’s death came and went again. The whole band was with me, this time around, minus Eliott. Even Manon had somehow escaped Charles for the day. We still didn’t know about the two of them at that point, so when Manon and I fell asleep sharing a bed like little kids, there was nothing but love and grief shared between us. 

**Basile Savary:**

I proposed to Maria in the middle of August. I got the boys to help me out with planning it out, and then Daphné and Emma helped too because they were appalled by how unromantic Arthur and Lucas’ contributions were. Yann’s were good, but I felt like he was holding out on his best ideas for some reason. Or someone else. 

**Maria Savary (nurse; wife, Basile Savary):**

He set up a scavenger hunt for me, leading to him in the backyard with the rest of the band minus Manon playing a beautiful love song I’d never heard before. He stood in the middle of it all, roses scattered across the grass, a ring in his hand. I was so surprised. Sure, we’d talked about marriage, but I hadn’t been expecting it at all. It was one of the happiest days I’d ever experienced at the time, and it’s still up there even now.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Daph and I wrote a little something for the occasion. It was nothing special, and we never recorded, released, or sang it again but once, at their wedding, but it was nice getting back into creative mode. Imane  _ had _ technically banned me from anything of the sort until September, but I thought she’d be ok with this exception. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

It was a beautiful day, and we celebrated all night, but it was only then that my new lifestyle started to really impact how I felt day by day. I was lightheaded and cold, even in the summer heat, and every slice of celebratory cake offered to me made me want to throw up just at the sight of it.

It wasn’t healthy, what I was doing, starving myself, but Manon hadn’t noticed me yet, which meant I wasn’t good enough, at least in my twisted mind.

**Emma Borgès:**

Daphné was always thin, but she got really skinny over the summer. I didn’t say anything about it because I didn’t want her to think that I thought she hadn’t looked good before, it just surprised me. I wondered if I should have been worrying about my weight or something too, but then I decided I didn’t care and ate more cake.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

September came in the blink of an eye, and with it came our meeting to discuss our third album with Sofiane and Imane. No one expected Eliott to be there, I’m not sure if anyone even expected to ever see Eliott again, but an hour into our decided upon meeting time, he strolled right in. With a gold band on his left ring finger.

**Yann Cazas:**

As soon as Eliott showed up, tanned as though he’d been laying on the beach all summer, eyes bright but hesitant, Lucas paled considerably and stormed out of the room. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I would have gone to check on him, but I didn’t know if that was what he wanted. I assumed the reason he wanted space from me was because I was dating Charles, but I still didn’t know about what Charles had made him do, so I didn’t completely understand it.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Sometime when I wasn’t looking, I became the designated Lallemant whisperer, so I followed him. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

There it was. Boom. 

**Basile Savary:**

Eliott told us he’d spent the summer in Italy, and that he and Lucille had gotten married at a private ceremony a few months ago. I was surprised, but I was happy for him! He and Lucille seemed to have a pretty great relationship, from what I’d seen, so I thought it was a good thing. I also hoped maybe it would help Lucas move on, because he really needed to. 

**Yann Cazas:**

It explained Lucas’ abrupt exit, at the very least. Part of me wanted to punch Eliott, but the rational part of me decided against it. It was his prerogative to marry his girlfriend of over a year, he didn’t really owe anything to Lucas. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Something wasn’t right about it all. I remembered Lucas’ mental vacancy just before the summer, right after the tour, and it coincided nicely with when Eliott fucked off to Europe. Something had happened between them again, I was sure of it. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wanted to pull Lucas aside to explain, but I knew he wouldn’t want to hear it. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Lucas told me that Eliott had asked him to marry him, and that he’d broken up with Lucille. I was shocked by this revelation, even more shocked that Eliott was now married, but to Lucille.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Daphné just kept repeating, “But I don’t understand…” and I didn’t know what to tell her, because clearly I didn’t either. Eventually I calmed down enough to rejoin the meeting, and I was very proud of myself, because I didn’t look at him once, not even when we started planning writing schedules. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

After the meeting I wondered where I was supposed to live. I was married, I couldn’t just keep living with Idriss, but Lucille had a roommate too, some other model she knew, so that obviously wouldn’t work either. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Lucille came and picked Eliott up after the meeting, and I couldn’t help but feel like we were in similar positions. Me and Eliott, not Lucille. I didn’t know who’d asked who to get married or why they’d been in Italy all this time, but the vibe I got from the two of them was very different than it had been before, and not in a good way.

I knew everyone else would probably take Lucas’ side if it came down to it, and there was something deeper going on with it all, but I felt I owed it to Eliott to hear both sides of the story because, as much as I loved Lucas, his version of events never told the whole truth of any matter.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I did something stupid, and I called Chloé again. I didn’t even know if she was still in LA, or if she still had the same number, but I was either lucky or unlucky in that she did. She seemed surprised to hear from me, which made sense, but I asked if she wanted to go out again sometime, for old time’s sake. She told me she needed time to think about it, because I’d broken her heart. 

An hour later, she had about five different dates planned for us to go on.

Daphné was pissed when she caught wind of it, rightfully so, but I ignored her concerns. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

We all knew Lucas was gay, even if he hadn’t explicitly stated it in a formal manner. I had no idea what he was doing with Chloé again, but I knew it would end poorly for everyone involved.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t explicitly tell her we’d be dating again, but when she decided that was what she wanted, I didn’t say no. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas started dating someone, Chloé. I didn’t know her, but everyone else filled me in on the fact that she was his ex and what all had gone down with them in the past. Lucas had told me he was gay, and while he could definitely have changed his mind, I didn’t really think he had. I didn’t know if he was with her for my sake or for his, but I didn’t feel comfortable enough to call him out on it anyway. Not when he could have called me out on something much greater. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

The first few writing sessions started in the same way that the “Minute by Minute” sessions had started, with one key difference. Lucille was always there. 

I took a guess that she’d figured some things out, or maybe Eliott had told her, and she didn’t trust the two of us alone together, even though Daphné was also there sometimes.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I didn’t want Lucille there when we were trying to write, but she said married couples did everything together, and she wanted to be there just in case I had an episode and I needed her. In the back of my mind I knew that wasn’t how it worked, but she’d continually convinced me that she knew better than I did, so I believed her. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I tried to entertain Lucille to the best of my ability, but she was not very fun to be around. She was also one of the most gorgeous women I’d ever known, every bit the type of person I was trying to be from the outside, and looking at her was a reminder that I wasn’t ever going to be pretty or skinny enough. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I told Eliott that we should take a break from writing for a while, so he and his wife could settle into married life. I figured I’d go behind his back and write with Daphné in the meantime. Lucille loved the idea, of course. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

It was weird, before the summer she’d wanted everything to do with my ‘rockstar’ life, she never would have let Lucas decide to write without me— because even if he wasn’t saying it upfront I knew that was what he was going to do— and she would have made sure everyone in the world was looking at the two of us. After the summer, though, it was like she wanted us to play house, or she wanted me to just sit at home day after day waiting for her to decide what to do with our lives. 

She was a fairly famous model, but she was more famous for being my girlfriend. I think she knew that, too, and maybe that’s why she wanted it to change. The public didn’t know that we were married, and I didn’t want to tell them, because I was still pretending that marriage was just a word and we were really just dating, but Lucille had other ideas. 

I asked Daphné to make Lucas hold off from writing while we took a little break, though she really had no reason to listen to me.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I didn’t listen to him, but we also didn’t write, because Lucas was struck by a wave of writer’s block. Eliott was his inspiration, for the most part, and that looked like it was truly over for good now, so he was trying to figure out what else he had to say. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucille organized a Vogue cover shoot for the two of us to reveal to the world that we were married. The story was that I’d proposed to her on tour, but we’d kept it under wraps because we were tired of the scrutiny of the public eye. That was when I knew that she knew, or at least had an idea, of the actual reason we were married. 

So, I did the Vogue shoot and the interview and pretended I wasn’t becoming a version of myself I didn’t like very much.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Listen, I was Eliott’s manager, and I knew the Vogue shoot would be excellent for him and his career publicity wise, but I still advised him not to do it. I cared too much about him personally at that point, but I felt someone had to. He didn’t listen to me, did it anyway, but I didn’t think it was a good thing for him and Lucille to be so public about everything. For their own sake. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Ah, the Vogue shoot. Gave us some good publicity, so I wasn’t too bothered. I knew Lucas would be, though.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Fucking Lucille Valentine. I don’t even want to waste more breath talking about her, but I know that I have to.

**Manon Demissy:**

I asked Eliott over to my place one night when I knew Charles would be out, since those two had a tendency to butt heads. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I thought it was going to be some sort of trick or gotcha situation, because she was obviously Lucas’ sister first and foremost. Not that I’d seen much of it in the past year and a half, but still. 

She made dinner for me and damn was it good. One of their parents must have been a good cook, because Manon and Lucas were both quite skilled in the kitchen. Manon was more of a baker, actually, but she still made really good food. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I didn’t really know why I’d invited him over, honestly. Thankfully, he came without Lucille, so I was hoping I’d have the real Eliott over for dinner, not the version he was with her. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Manon’s home was beautiful, but it wasn’t Manon. I mean, I didn’t know her all that well compared to some of the others, but I knew her well enough to know that this lavish display of extravagance wasn’t her style, but someone else's.

**Manon Demissy:**

He asked where Charles was, and I levelled with him, asking where Lucille was. He just smiled at me in a crooked way, like he couldn’t help it, and I had a feeling then that we were on the same page.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I went to Manon’s for dinner or other meals a lot after that. I felt like I could be real with her in a way that I couldn’t with everyone else. From everyone else’s perspective, me and Lucas were a thing way in the past, and maybe it should have been that way, but Manon was willing to listen when I told her the reason Lucille was my wife and that I’d asked Lucas before her. She didn’t judge, at least out loud, and I really appreciated it. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I don’t know what I was expecting, but that was not it. Eliott being bipolar made some things a bit clearer, in terms of some of his behaviors or some of the ways he and Lucas acted together. Lucas was the only one other than me that knew in the band, so of course they’d have that extra level of trust between them.

I told him he needed to divorce Lucille, but he argued that he couldn’t. That he didn’t necessarily want to, even. He’d given up hope on things working out with Lucas, and he and Lucille loved each other, he said. All he wanted was for Lucas to forgive him and maybe give him a chance as a friend. I didn’t totally believe that they were over for good, but I humored the notion. And I told him that he had to tell Lucas that, otherwise Lucas would harbor a grudge the rest of his life.

Truthfully, I didn’t totally blame Lucas, because Eliott  _ had _ proposed to him and then gone and married someone else a few weeks later, not even reaching out once for almost a half a year. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It had been a little while since I’d last seen Eliott. I had writer’s block in the meantime so no work was getting done without him anyway, which wasn’t necessarily ideal. There was also the Vogue cover and interview with  _ the Demaurys _ , ‘Hollywood’s it couple’. Blegh. 

He came over without warning or Lucille one day, and I let him in because it was raining and I wasn’t that petty. It reminded me of the last time he’d shown up at my door soaked from head to toe, but I tried to push that memory from my mind to the best of my ability. Some days, I was able to pretend I’d imagined that it had happened at all. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I took Manon’s advice, and decided to try to talk to Lucas. The few times we’d actually communicated with one another, things hadn’t gone too bad, so I hoped this would help bring us back to a friendly place.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was glad to see him, because I was always glad to see him, but I wasn’t glad to see him because I didn’t want to go into another conversation saying nothing but meaning to say everything.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I told him I was sorry, right off the bat, for ditching town for five months and not explaining anything and coming back  _ married _ of all things, with no warning.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted to know why he’d done all of that, why he’d proposed to me in the first place. Because from where I was standing, it seemed like he’d been drunk one night and wanted to play a little joke on me because he knew my feelings were still there.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I told him most everything, though there were some gaps in what I remembered during the period of time I was manic. He didn’t need to know Lucille and I’s daily activities in Italy, but I told him where we spent the summer and why I’d been too ashamed to come home sooner.

Instead of responding to any of that, he said, “I hate it when you call her baby.”

I didn’t know if he was done, or what to say to that, so I waited, watching him carefully as I always had. We were sitting on opposite sides of his kitchen counter, in full view of one another. 

He continued, “And I hate that I hate it, because you love  _ her _ , not me, and you chose  _ her _ , not me. Which is fine, your feelings are up to you, but when you show up here and tell me you’ve broken up with her and that you want to marry me, what am I supposed to think?”

I didn’t have an answer, really, when he laid it out like that.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I just got sick of not talking about it. He’d had a manic episode, that I understood, but having an episode didn’t invalidate any of his feelings. He didn’t pick up someone random off the street and jet off to Europe to marry them, he did that with Lucille because he loved her and she loved him.

It just didn’t explain where we stood with one another. Being drunk and saying something stupid was one thing, but there had been no follow up after I said no, no room to talk, and now we were both left feeling like there was something irreparable between us. And I hated that more than him calling Lucille baby. 

I asked him why he’d come to me, asking me to marry him.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I told him I didn’t know. It was just a feeling that I’d had, a feeling that told me to run after him, hold on tightly, and never let go.

He just looked at me, heartache written in every line of his face, and said, “Then why  _ did _ you let go?”

I didn’t have an answer then, I still don’t now. Cowardice, maybe. Or shame. He said no when I asked him to marry me, and I guess I just took that and ran with it, even though I knew it was what anyone with any sense would have said.

We sat there, silently, for a minute that stretched a mile. Then, stupidly, I asked him if he still loved me. I had no right to ask him that.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

The thing is that I would have answered, I would have said yes, I still loved him no matter how much I tried not to, but then we heard something fall in the other room and our attention turned to Chloé, who looked like she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t have been. That said enough about how much she heard. 

The door was open, she said, she’d come to surprise me. After a minute the shock turned to anger, and she bolted, I followed her, asking her to please,  _ please _ , keep what she’d heard to herself. I was sorry, I really was, and I told her so, and I begged her not to tell anyone. She was rightfully pissed off, yelled in my face about how she could and would tell anyone whatever she wanted. She was appalled that she’d been used by me to hide the fact I was in love with another man, and I could see the rage and hurt ran deep. 

“I really loved you, you know,” she said to me, and it was like I was looking at myself, on the opposite side of the mirror. I just let her go after that, because the realization struck me at my core. I couldn’t help that I loved someone else, just like Eliott couldn’t help that he did. 

Every day after that, I waited for the blow to come, for Chloé to out me to every source she could find, but it never happened. I still don’t know why. 

**Chloé Farge-Jeanson (actress,** **_Des Excuses_ ** **):**

I’m only going to say one thing, and then you can let Lucas tell the rest of our story, is that ok? I’ve moved on and I truly don’t care enough anymore to speak on what happened when I was in my early twenties.

I never outed Lucas, no, but I was going to. I almost did dozens of times. Some days I still don’t know why I didn’t, but I’m glad I didn’t. Lucas was a good person, he really was, even if he made some stupid decisions from time to time. We had a lot of fun together, actually, when we weren’t trying to be a couple. I wouldn’t have minded having him as a friend before he’d lied to me and tried to use me to hide a part of himself.

He was also on top of the world, and I was just his jilted lover, when it came down to it. I wanted to be someone on my own terms, not because I’d taken down Lucas Lallemant. If I’d done that, it would have been all people wanted me to talk about for the rest of my life, and I didn’t need that. Acting was what I loved, and I wanted people to know my name because of that, not because of something that would ruin someone else’s life and career. 

Sure, it maybe wasn’t the most morally upstanding reason not to out him, but there you have it. I harbor no ill will towards him and I hope that he’s happy with the man of his dreams somewhere out there, if he ever found them. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas looked understandably distraught when he came back from talking to Chloé, and I told him that I could leave, but he said no. He asked if we could go back to being friends, which was not what I had been expecting at all. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It was better than nothing. And I really didn’t want nothing. I also, stupidly, thought that maybe it would help me move on. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I said yes without a second thought. That was all I wanted, to fall back into that easy dynamic we’d had for so long, before feelings had complicated anything. Lucas had been the best friend I’d ever had, and I wanted that back more than anything.

He joked that he’d still be writing songs about me, even if we were just friends, and I smiled, saying I probably would too. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

For the record, I didn’t stop loving him, and I gave up on trying after a little while.

I’m not necessarily proud of it, but I started keeping what I called the Sunflower Diaries. There were six of them in total, because I realized how much I’d lost my shit by volume six and decided they needed to be locked up and/or shredded for my own sake. They were just a collection of thoughts, words, stories, poems, and lyrics that I wrote with one person in mind. I called them the Sunflower Diaries instead of Sunshine Diaries because I was the sunflower, I always have been. I am so in love with the sun and the light that it brings that I turn to wherever it is, whenever I can, just like a sunflower. Eliott was the sun to my sunflower, obviously.

That was where “Sunflower Vol.6” came from. No one understood the title but me, and I liked it that way. The song didn’t make it on the album, but it was a good one, very experimental and fun to record. It was also a blast to perform live. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I supervised Lucille while she tried to supervise Eliott and Lucas while they wrote with one another. Now that they were all buddy buddy again, she was suspicious as ever, because apparently two dudes couldn’t be friends without fucking. I mean, ok, obviously their past together came into play, but from what I could tell, they were both getting over it decently. I didn’t know how much Lucille knew, anyway.

Lucas seemed much lighter and didn’t lament to me every night about how Eliott would never love him back. I did try to hook him up with a few guys from time to time, but he never took me up on it, so I figured he wasn’t fully moved on, but working towards it. 

Weirdly, after a while, I think Lucille thought we were friends. For the most part we would sit out by the pool together trying to watch Eliott and Lucas working inside. Well, that was what she was doing, I was just sitting out by the pool because even winters in LA didn’t get cold. Sometimes we went to the beach too, and I thought that if I didn’t dislike her I might have had a crush on her. She was beautiful, and she really wasn’t that bad all the time. 

She told me that I was beautiful and sometimes asked why I’d never tried to model. I told her I wasn’t pretty enough for that, because I wasn’t, but she always disagreed. I didn’t know if she was just trying to keep me from getting fed up with her through meaningless compliments, but it always made me feel good when she said so. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t know what was going on with Lucille and Daphné, but I was worried that it had something to do with the fact that Daphné didn’t really look or act like herself that much anymore. She was super skinny, not that she’d ever not been skinny before, which didn’t make sense to me because I thought she’d been eating everything I’d been eating. She got tired more often and always had bags under her eyes, but I would overhear Lucille telling her she looked beautiful, and it worried me that she seemed to believe it. 

Daphné couldn’t be ugly if she tried, she’s one of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever known, but this version of Daphné that looked like skin and bone and was always cold and had her ribs poking through her skin wasn’t the beautiful Daphné I loved.

I really didn’t want to talk to Manon about it, because I really didn’t want to talk to Manon, but I thought that was the only option, since she was the only one close to Daphné in the way I was.

**Manon Demissy:**

I was so happy when Lucas called me, but he just wanted to talk about Daphné. Eliott and I had been getting together more and more often, and I’d hoped Lucas’ call had more to do with Eliott telling him that I needed my brother back again than talking about something else entirely.

Still, I listened as he talked, and I got worried too. I’d been neglecting my friendship with Daphné, because Charles had told me I didn’t need it, but when I was talking to Lucas I realized how stupid that sounded. Of course I needed it, she was one of my best friends. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Manon invited me over one day, out of the blue, and I took it as validation of what I was doing. I’d finally earned her attention. 

**Manon Demissy:**

When Daphné showed up I didn’t know what to think. Well, I did, but I wanted to wish it away. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Manon didn’t react favorably, she looked at me like I was a ghost, and like what she was seeing pained her. I felt shame build up inside me but I tried not to let it show. Was this not what she wanted? Was I not her version of a pretty girl?

**Manon Demissy:**

I made her tortillas, with potatoes, and I didn’t say anything, but we ate together, and I asked her to come over for dinner the next night, so we could do the same. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

In my sick, twisted mind, I thought,  _ at least this got her attention _ . 

**Emma Borgès:**

Manon reached out to me suddenly, for the first time in a while, and I was a little upset that I was so shocked by it. I was pissed she was dating Charles, but I didn’t want to lose her to him. She invited me over to dinner with her and Daph, and it started to become a regular thing. Daphné didn’t look like she was doing well, but I didn’t know if she was sick or what, so I didn’t say anything once again. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I felt like shit that Daphné had been suffering and I’d ignored it because I was too caught up in myself, but it wasn’t really surprising. I always was, it’s the nature of a narcissist, I suppose. 

It’s what I am, really, a narcissist. We all were, to a point. You can’t do what we did and not be one. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas wasn’t sleeping, I noticed. I didn’t know how long it had been going on, but the bags under his eyes always looked so deep I thought they’d never go away and he got irritable more quickly and drank coffee like it was his lifeblood. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

No, I wasn’t sleeping, but that was nothing new. I only noticed it when Eliott brought it up. I was surprised he felt the need to say something at all, I could run well enough on the little sleep I got from years of practice. 

He told me we couldn’t write until I got a full night’s sleep, and I said there was a fat chance of that happening, so he lifted me over his shoulder and carried me to my room, tucking me under the covers and laying next to me with a smug expression. Lucille wasn’t there that day, obviously.

Nothing happened between us or anything, it really was just Eliott wanting me to get some sleep and making sure it happened. I didn’t know how to explain to him that it wasn’t on purpose, my brain just wouldn’t quiet down enough to let me rest most nights. He asked what kinds of things I thought about and I said everything. That was the problem. 

He asked what I meant by everything, and I started to tell him about the theory I believed in, of parallel universes. I drove myself crazy thinking of what each different version of myself was doing better than me.

He said he didn’t believe in that, what drove  _ him  _ crazy was thinking that with every choice he made, he’d never know what would have happened if he’d have made a different one. 

I told him that parallel universes weren’t all bad, though, because in some ways it just meant that I’d tried everything. That there was some universe where I was a ballet dancer, or working in a bio lab somewhere, or whatever. He asked if there was a universe where we were together, and I said yes. Because it was true, there had to be one.

**Eliott Demaury:**

He said yes with such certainty, and it almost had me wishing we lived in that universe instead of this one. Instead of saying that, I told him  _ fine _ , maybe parallel universes were real, if it meant we could do anything and everything.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

That conversation is where “At The Same Time In Another Universe” came from. It was the first song we wrote together that we knew would be on the album. There had been others, but none of them felt right, and this one felt right. I was writing selfishly, thinking about the universe where we ended up together, and thankfully he didn’t question me about it. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

He was transparent as can be, even if he thought he wasn’t, but it was fine, because I was sort of writing about the same thing. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Whenever Daphné would come over she would tell me about what Lucas and Eliott were writing, but when Charles would ask me about it, I wouldn’t tell him. I don’t know why. I thought I trusted him, at that point. I guess I just didn’t think he needed to have the final say in any of our creativity.

**Charles Munier (studio head, Shame Records):**

I had to make sure they weren’t going to ruin the reputation of my label with songs about boys fucking other boys or whatever they were all into. That wasn’t a thing at the time, I wasn’t homophobic I was just a businessman. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

One night Eliott and I went down to the beach together under the guise of writing but we ended up just laying together under the stars. He told me that his favorite star was Polaris, the north star, always there to lead you to where you were supposed to be. I liked the idea, even if I didn’t totally believe a star could do all that.

I asked him if he felt like he was where he was supposed to be at that moment, and he just looked at me, softly, beautifully, and said, “Of course.” 

The Sunflower Diaries had a field day with that one.

He told me more about the stars and how he’d always been fascinated by them, even growing up in Paris. He had this place he’d go to called the petite ceinture, and it was like a refuge for him. Still, even if he was feeling more alone than he’d ever thought possible, Polaris was up there in the sky reminding him that he wasn’t. 

I told him that it should be the title of the album,  _ Polaris _ . Everyone needed to know that they weren’t alone, and I hoped that was something we could say with our music. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I’d told other people about Polaris, the star, and what it meant to me, namely my parents, Idriss, and Lucille, but none of them understood quite like Lucas did. He saw me, every part of me, and while that should have scared me, it didn’t. It just made me feel safe. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

We proposed the album title to the rest of the band on our first day back in the studio, to come up with and start to record the instrumental bits of “At The Same Time In Another Universe”. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Lucas had already told me about it, and told me that I had to back him up or else he would make sure Lucille never left me alone. Such an evil threat, but I liked their idea anyway so it was unnecessary.

**Manon Demissy:**

I didn’t know when Eliott and Lucas decided they’d make  _ every _ decision for the rest of us, and I tried not to be too outwardly pissed about it. I mean, I loved the idea they’d come up with, but I also would have loved to be involved in the process.

**Basile Savary:**

I didn’t know anything about astronomy, but it was a cool name, so I agreed to it.

**Arthur Broussard:**

_ Polaris _ had a nice ring to it. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I’ve never cared much about what the albums are called, I cared about what we put on them, so I was more anxious to get started on this new song than debate the album title.

**Emma Borgès:**

Stars were cool. I was down with that. What I wanted to know was when Lucas and Eliott became buddy buddy again, because I felt like I’d missed something huge. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

It was early to have an album title planned when only one song was done, but it was better early than late, in my opinion. I liked the title, and that it meant something with some significance. What I really wanted to talk about was the leading single, because the promo had worked so well for  _ Minute by Minute  _ with the leading single and the video, I thought we should do that again.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Imane wanted to know about a single, but I didn’t think ATSTIAU was our single. It was going to be really good, great even, but I didn’t think it was our heavy hitter. It wasn’t necessarily the most commercial, and we needed something to show that we weren’t just on the top of our game, we were even higher.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I agreed with Lucas, I loved the song, but I didn’t think it was  _ it _ . Whatever our single was was going to be my introduction to the world as part of the band, I had to make it count. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Imane and I had been in conversation with Rolling Stone again, this time for an article and cover to come out at the same time as the single, since the world as a whole didn’t know Eliott was a part of the band yet. It would gain us some great traction, get people talking.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

While the rest of the band toyed with melodies, we got down to business in crafting the single. We didn’t really have anything to go off of, and all of our ideas were either too perfect to pull off or not perfect enough. 

Then, inspiration struck.

**Eliott Demaury:**

“I Think I’m In Love”. It was eighties, it was unique, and it was so, so good. It was about finding peace in someone you love when everything gets to be too much, at least that was what I took it as. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

To me, “I Think I’m In Love” was about first love, and wanting to hold onto it forever, even if you knew that was just a pipe dream. It was about Eliott, for me, obviously, and he probably knew that, but I didn’t really care because we got into such a good groove writing it that every word felt like a stroke of genius.

**Manon Demissy:**

I took the lead on the instrumentals for “At The Same Time In Another Universe”, and it felt nice. Everyone kept looking at me like they were afraid of me, or maybe of my connection to Charles, so I did my best to show them that I was still the same Manon they’d always known. I wasn’t entirely the same of course, but none of us were.

Thankfully, I had Emma and Daph on my side for the most part. Daphné looked like she was getting better too, bit by bit. She still wouldn’t tell me what had triggered it in the first place, but I was glad I could be there to help her through it. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I started to spiral, a little bit, while we were working on “I Think I’m In Love”. Not because things weren’t working, or because I didn’t like the song, because it  _ was _ working, and I loved the song, but I felt like a fraud. I was singing about a love that made you feel safe and whole, and the love I had for Lucille, it wasn’t that. 

With her, I was always in my head, trying to not sound too crazy or too passionate or whatever might have set her off believing I was incapable of caring for myself. I’d always been a very verbally and physically affectionate sort of person, and while she appreciated the physical affection, she didn’t feel the same about the verbal. She would tell me to stop saying I loved her because I couldn’t, really, do that in my mental state. She told me so much I started to believe her. The nights I felt most alone were the nights she said she knew this was just a fixation, but that she’d put the work in to fix me and make it last. Even with Camille, I’d never felt like a problem to be fixed, and we’d had a whole host of other problems.

I didn’t think about how I’d felt with Lucas, because that had been like nothing I’d felt before and if I dwelled on it for too long I’d hate myself even more for giving it up. 

Hate myself even more, I say, like I didn’t already hate myself so much. 

I was good at hiding it, though, and that’s what I continued to do for longer than I should have. Everyone wanted Sunshine Boy, not Eliott Demaury, whoever the hell that was. I didn’t think I even knew anymore. 

**Basile Savary:**

Eliott seemed sad, sometimes, in a way that was like he couldn’t help it. I could also tell he didn’t want anyone to notice, so I didn’t, but I regret that a lot. More than I can even say. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Somehow Eliott and I were getting to be deeper friends than I’d ever expected. He told me about how he felt, sometimes, and the feelings he had that Lucille invalidated. He took everything she said as gospel, even when she was telling him that he was incapable of love. I couldn’t believe it, but he wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell him differently. I’m not sure he would have heard it from anyone. 

**Emma Borgès:**

Lucas and Eliott really killed it with “I Think I’m In Love”. The eighties were turning out to be all about the synth, so this song was my time to shine. It’s probably the most stereotypically eighties we ever sounded, but the song remains a classic, the kind of song that makes every throwback playlist and people can’t help but sing along to when they hear it in a restaurant or on the oldies radio station. 

Oldies, god, that makes me sound ancient. Our music is being played on  _ oldies _ radio. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

Imane and Sofiane brought me in to direct the music video again, because they said “Minute by Minute” was nothing without me. I disagreed, but I’d take the compliment. “I Think I’m In Love” was my favorite song of theirs to date, and I knew that it would be an instant classic, so I wanted the music video to be able to do the same. 

I asked both Eliott and Lucas what their vision for the song was, and I got two different answers. For Lucas it was about first love, for Eliott it was about finding a love to drown out all the outside noise, but I could work with that. 

I crafted a narrative for both of them to work through that took into account both of their ideas about the song. We shot in Vegas, because there was a line in there about ‘Sin City’ and we pretty much had an unlimited budget, so why not. 

Lucas’ character was moving through the world on a mission. He was looking for love in all the wrong places, but when he finally found it he couldn’t let go. He would upend his entire life for the love he’d found, and their journey went from there, combating the loudness of the world with the loudness of their love. Daphné would play opposite him again, because he wasn’t ready to come out yet, Daphné wasn’t out yet, and they’d done an excellent job at faking chemistry in “Minute by Minute”, probably because they were so close as it was.

Eliott’s character was overwhelmed by life itself and found his release in loving people for a single night. Then, he finally finds the one who makes the loudness of the world go quiet, and the two live in this beautiful silence together, hearts beating louder than the world around them. Eliott  _ was _ out, and I still ran it by him, but I wanted his story to be captured by a variety of love interests. He didn’t want Lucille in the video, but she gave permission for him to pretend to love someone else in her absence since it was only for work. It probably would have looked hypocritical otherwise, because she was all over other people in the modelling work she did herself. Like “Minute by Minute”, he and Manon would play the final lovers, a choice I made because he and Manon seemed closer than ever and I also didn’t give a shit if Charles had a problem with it. 

Emma and Yann would play a part in Lucas’ narrative, while Arthur and Basile would play a part in Eliott’s. I felt kind of bad for not giving them as thought out of stories, but they didn’t seem to care one way or another. Arthur still had purple hair, though, and I was so glad that was memorialized on film. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I didn’t need to be front and center in a music video to know my worth in this band. 

**Yann Cazas:**

It made sense that Lucas and Eliott were the leads, they were the ones singing the song. Plus, this way it would tie in with our other video. 

**Basile Savary:**

I got them to let Maria be in the video! She was one of the girls Eliott ‘fell in love with’ but they didn’t kiss or anything. I told her it was fine, because it wasn’t real, but she didn’t want to. 

**Maria Savary:**

Eliott was hot, sure, but that didn’t mean I had to jump on the first and only chance I had to makeout with him. I’d leave that to the other extras they hired. I had Baz, and he was all I needed.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I would have raised a bit of a fuss if I hadn’t been so out of it all the time. My hearing was getting bad again, and I didn’t know how to deal, so I didn’t. I felt like Lucas during our first tour, which should have been a major red flag, but alas. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

When I heard Eliott would have multi gendered love interests for the video I wanted to say fuck it, consequences be damned, I’d do the same. There were moments I wanted to be proud like he was, but my fear always drowned it out. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Another day, another love story I think everyone wished was swapped. At least I did. I wanted to come out anyway, I would have had my character end up with Manon’s in a heartbeat. Of course, there was no indication she felt the same way at all, so my secret desire would have to be kept hidden a while longer.

**Alexia Martineau:**

You want to hear about their costuming and makeup again, don’t you? Even if you don’t, I’m going to go on a tangent about it anyways. I’ll just cover the lead boys and girls, for simplicity’s sake. Sorry Emma, Baz, Arthur, and Yann. 

This one was far more pedestrian than the first video, to my dissatisfaction. Eliott had light wash jeans and black Doc Martens, and for some reason he always liked to have his ankles exposed in his jeans, so we didn’t stop that happening. On top he just had on a black hoodie with this big brown jacket over it. The jacket became instantly iconic after the video, people were trying to find replicas everywhere they could. He didn’t have any makeup aside from gold glitter around his eyes and dusting his cheekbones and temples, which was a callback to the MXM video.

Daphné had a fuzzy light pink sweater tucked into a denim skirt with some sheer black tights and gray booties. Her hair was curled to perfection, still long as ever. The longest I’d ever seen it, actually. Her makeup was simple too, light pink shadow bringing out the color of her big green eyes, soft blush and a few glittery stars painted on her cheeks like freckles. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I stopped eating again, just before the video shoot, because I knew I’d be compared to Manon and the other extras we cast, and I didn’t want to be the ugly one of the bunch.

**Alexia Martineau:**

Lucas had on some jeans and Nike’s that the brand wanted him to wear. They paid a shit ton just to get that little promotion, but I’m sure they made more off of the video than we did in terms of how those shoes flew off the shelves after Lucas wore them. He also had this gray hoodie that said ‘Romance’ across the chest in bold white letters, which I thought was fitting, so he paired that with a blue bomber jacket to contrast the warmness of Eliott’s brown one, and his hair was an artful mess as always. For his makeup, we painted thin lines of glitter like a sunburst around his eyes, and even though it was somewhat risky, he pulled it off like no one’s business. If it hadn’t been the eighties, he probably could have got some makeup endorsement off that look alone.

Manon had red and black plaid jeans with black combat boots, a very rock ‘n roll look. This was paired with a Seven Minutes in Heaven band t-shirt, which was a very tongue in cheek move but people ate it up. Her hair was darker again, and shorter, just above her shoulders. She looked like a stereotypical rockstar without even meaning to, and I’d like to say that I contribute the rise of the grunge style in the nineties to Manon Demissy’s influence. Her lipstick was red, of course, matching her pants exactly. She had smudged black eyeliner illuminating her bright eyes and some glitter lining her red lips. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I made out with at least ten people, but I think only, like, five or six of them made it into the actual video, not including Manon. We’d had a good laugh beforehand at the absurdity of us falling in love for a video again. The first one hadn’t seemed so weird, because we weren’t very close, but in a lot of ways she now felt like the sister I’d never had, so it was a bit more awkward.

**Manon Demissy:**

I kept getting lipstick and glitter all over his face, which was not ideal. 

_ (Manon laughs) _

I swear, everyone on set was probably so pissed that we had to continually wipe his face off and reapply my makeup, but we couldn’t stop laughing. Daphné and Lucas were no better, in my defense. I didn’t know how that had happened, that Eliott and I ended up as close as them, but I was glad it had. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Daphné kept telling me that I was a bad kisser and I spit it right back at her. We knew we were mostly joking, but I think everyone else thought we were being serious. Manon and Eliott couldn’t stop laughing with one another, and I think it infected Daphy and I, because after a little while we couldn’t stop either. 

I will say that we played lovers  _ way _ better than Manon and Eliott. Maybe that was because they were both with other people, whereas Daphné and I had practice with yearning and knew exactly how to turn it on and off. 

Daphné, Eliott, and I wrote a song after the last day of the shoot, late at night when none of us were actually inebriated but we may as well have been simply from lack of sleep. “Infiltration”, we called it, and Daphné got to carry the lead vocal of that one. I took over background duties and let Eliott have secondary vocal, mostly because he couldn’t play any other instruments for shit, and it would be a good way to show that he was as integral to the group as any of us.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

“Infiltration” was an interesting one to write. Somehow it ended up being about feeling out of place in your mind and body, but with subtle— or not so subtle— critique on society itself. Yann loved it, naturally, and even though it hit deeper than any of us intended, it was always brilliant to perform, and not just because I got lead vocals.

**Yann Cazas:**

Yeah, “Infiltration” was pretty damn great. I thought they could have pushed the envelope further, said things more outright, but I wasn’t a songwriter, so I kept my mouth shut. We toyed with a few different production styles for that one and were stuck between two of them for a while, nearly until the album was released. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

We wanted to hopefully get at least one or two more songs written by the time we had our Rolling Stone shoot and interview, so I delved into my Sunflower Diaries for inspiration. Eliott didn’t seem particularly inspired, but I didn’t think anything of it because he’d been the central mastermind behind “Infiltration”.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucille kept getting in my head, more and more. Manon was the only one I could talk to about it, but I stopped doing that, even, because her advice was good and I didn’t want to take any of it. I wasn’t in the right mental space to even consider it. The only time I really felt like me had been with Manon, but now I didn’t even have that. It could have been different, with Lucas, but I was scared that if I let myself feel things around him I wouldn’t be able to stop feeling them.

I just want to put it out there that I’m not ashamed of my bipolarity, I don’t see it as something that makes me unworthy or incapable of love, but the thing about emotional manipulation is that it can turn something that you have even the slightest bit of insecurity about into your biggest insecurity.

It wasn’t just my mental illness, Lucille got to me about a lot of things. My singing, my role in the band, those were big areas she liked to hit on. I’d sing to her sometimes, because I thought it was romantic, and I remembered how Lucas singing to me had made me feel when I’d been at a low. She would tell me I was pitchy, or that she didn’t like how my voice sounded singing different songs. It made me want to hide that part of myself away, even though it was quite literally my job and I couldn’t have been  _ that _ bad if I’d been signed to a record label at all. 

She would make these insinuations, all the time, that the band didn’t really need me. She trusted me enough to let me work alone with Lucas more often at that point, but after days she  _ was _ there, she would say that Lucas could probably do it all on his own so much better, and that she didn’t know what I was wasting my time on with all of it. Sometimes I started to ask myself those same questions. 

I would ask her if she loved me, occasionally, because since I’d stopped allowing myself to say it, she had too. She would always say, “Sometimes,” like it was some sort of inside joke we shared. It wasn’t. I didn’t know when she’d stopped loving me  _ all _ the time, but it hit me more than I’d expected it to. 

All the constant stress and anxiety and feelings that I truly was all alone in the world, that even the woman I’d committed myself to loving forever would only ever love me halfway, plunged me into a really dark place.

I couldn’t even see Polaris anymore.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

There was one day that Eliott showed up to write, and I was really excited, because I’d had a songwriting epiphany and really wanted to knock this one out, but he’d barely greeted me when he walked through the door. I asked if he was all right, and he said he was fine, but I didn’t believe him. I knew that he had good days and bad days just like the rest of us, even if the good and bad hit harder and stronger for him sometimes, so I just took it as a bad day, and tried to cheer him up in small ways. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas thought he was being subtle, but he wasn’t. I wasn’t in the right mindset to appreciate it, though, I mostly brushed it off and felt a pit in my stomach that told me he was only trying to cheer me up out of pity.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

The song I’d been excited to share with him was what turned into “Curiosity”. I probably came on a bit too strong with it, because yeah, it was sort of about him, but I wanted it to feel a bit more general as well, so anyone could relate to it.

I thought of it as a sequel to “I Think I’m In Love”, where the love at first sight wears off, but the feelings remain. It’s sort of about getting closer to someone that you think— or maybe hope, desperately— could be your soulmate. It was about finding someone you feel safe with, your sanctuary. Because, lovers or not, he was that for me in many ways. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I contributed minimally, and I felt bad, because Lucas seemed so excited, I didn’t want to bring him down to my level. He sang parts of what he wanted it to sound like to me, and I could only focus on how much better he was than me and how I would do everyone a favor if I just left them all alone. Lucas and Daphné were more dynamic together vocally than he and I or her and I could ever be, and it was time that I accepted I had no place with them. With anyone. 

_ (Eliott pauses, a tear falls) _

It was the darkest moment of my life, and I couldn’t find the light. I was so scared and hopeless and I just thought— 

_ (Eliott takes a breath) _

I just thought, what’s the point of it all? Wouldn’t everyone be happier without me there? 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I was with Idriss, when I heard. He was still listed as Eliott’s emergency contact.

**Idriss Bakhellal (actor,** **_Life is Now_ ** **):**

I felt like I knew, just before I picked up the phone. It was the deepest sense of dread I’d ever felt in my life. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Sofiane called me just before he and Idriss left to go to the hospital, and I was in shock. I didn’t know if I should tell the other band members, but I knew that Lucas, at least, would never forgive me if I didn’t, so I called each one of them and informed them of what happened. I kept it together on the phone, but the minute I hung up with the last one of them, I broke down. I couldn’t stop crying. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I didn’t believe it at first, I told Imane that it wasn’t a very funny joke, but then Emma showed up from next door in tears and I knew that it wasn’t a joke. I relayed what Imane told me to Arthur, who looked equally as shocked as me.

I felt like I had to stay strong, for Emma, because she was a mess over it, and rightfully so. Now I wish I would have just let myself feel it, because being hollow never did anyone any good in the long run.

**Emma Borgès:**

I didn’t know what to do or say, I just started crying and couldn’t stop. Yann and Arthur held me all the way to the hospital, but I barely felt them there.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Not Eliott, I never expected it from Eliott. Or anyone, for that matter, but he always seemed so happy, so confident. I started to realize there was so much more to Eliott Demaury than I’d ever considered there to be, and I felt like shit for not seeing it sooner.

**Manon Demissy:**

My first thought jumped to Lucas, and how I needed to be with him. He couldn’t do this again. He couldn’t lose two of the people he’d loved more than anything. My second thought jumped to Eliott, and how I’d known a lot of how he’d been feeling, but I’d done nothing when it mattered. I’d underestimated the depths of his hurt, and I still haven’t forgiven myself for that.

**Basile Savary:**

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t real. That’s how I felt. Maria was a nurse at the hospital he was in, and she’d called to tell me that he was there just before Imane did. I didn’t know what she meant, but I was halfway out the door when Imane called. I felt so shattered, hearing what had happened. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, but it’s still hard not to blame myself in some ways, for not seeing things or talking to him when I thought he looked like he was hurting.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I only had one goal, and it was to make sure Lucas didn’t fall to where he’d fallen when his mom died. I was profoundly struck by what had happened too, but I felt like I wasn’t allowed to fall apart, because Lucas needed me, and  _ he  _ was falling apart.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I don’t want to talk about this too much. It still makes me— I don’t know. It’s something that I still feel in my heart quite often. It took a long time for me to not feel it every day.

I went through every single emotion in rapid succession, until I was practically numb. I don’t remember leaving the house to go to the hospital, I don’t even remember getting there, I just remember when the doctor came and told us that we could see him if we wanted to, but he was still asleep.

It had been a close call, he’d said, but Eliott would be just fine. I’m not sure if he knew what ‘just fine’ meant.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Lucille wasn’t there, and I didn’t know if any of us had thought to call her. I felt like someone should, but I didn’t want it to be me.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I went to see him first, and I wanted to be mad, but when I walked in and he was asleep, looking paler than I’d ever seen him, all my anger swelled up in my chest and I burst into tears, kneeling by the side of his bed.

I said a prayer for him, though I knew it probably wouldn’t mean much to him, and then I recomposed myself, gave him a kiss on the forehead, because it’s what he would have done for me, and went to get Lucas. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I still remember what Lucas said, finding me in the hospital. He thought I was asleep, I’m pretty sure, or maybe he didn’t care if I was awake or not. I sort of felt like I was asleep. 

He was crying harder than I’d ever heard and it was such a pained sound that I felt it deep in my bones. All I knew in that moment was that I never wanted to hear Lucas sound like that again. It broke my heart into pieces. 

He held my hands so tightly I thought he might break them, but I didn’t care, I would have deserved it. He said to me, “You’re an asshole, you’re a fucking asshole and I want to hate you for this, but I can’t, because I love you more than anything, and it’s my fault. I should have seen it, been there. Two of the people I’ve loved most in my life, and I’ve failed them both in ways that can never be repaired. I should have known better, I should have told you every day that I loved you. It seems so stupid to keep it to myself now because you could have died without knowing that you’re the most important person in my life. Every dream I have is about you, every song I write is about you, and in every parallel universe I imagine, I’m there with you. I know I failed you in ways that can’t be undone, but don’t you dare for one second think that there is any universe that is better without you in it. The world is nothing but brighter with you in it. I’m just a boy who’s afraid of the dark, but you’re the sun, and with you I don’t have to be afraid. I don’t  _ want  _ to be afraid. I think I’m afraid of everything, maybe, but I’m not afraid of you. I need you, Eliott, I need you like a lung.”

_ (Eliott blinks rapidly, takes a breath) _

I remember every word he said, because it was one of the most beautifully heartbreaking things I’d ever heard. So much of what he’d said was so wrong, but so much of it was  _ so right _ .

He left after that, and I actually fell asleep, but his words stayed with me. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Lucille blew in like a tornado and kicked everyone out, save me. She did try with me, but there was no way in hell I was going to let that happen. He was my brother, in all but blood. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I panicked when Lucille showed up. I obviously wasn’t in any state to vouch for myself or make any rash decisions, but it dawned on me that my first thought when my wife showed up at the hospital after I’d tried to kill myself shouldn’t have been blind panic. 

**Lucille Valentine-Rousseau (model, ex-wife of Eliott Demaury):**

I don’t really want to relive any of it, especially not that night, if I’m being honest. I was panicked, and I was just trying to do what was best for him. Obviously, the band pressure had been what had driven him to that point, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if Lucas Lallemant was a key player in that particular mess.

He was— I’d never seen him like that. Like, I knew he had brain problems, or whatever, but I never expected  _ that _ to happen. This might sound insensitive, but I thought immediately about how the media would run with this. I couldn’t let that happen, because I couldn’t be married to a headcase. Being married to Eliott had done so much for my career, and his too, but this kind of blow would be one we couldn’t come back from.

**Idriss Bakhlellal:**

Lucille went in there and immediately started berating him about how this would look to the public and how it would hurt  _ her _ career. I’d heard enough, and I got security to remove her. Oops.

She was right about one thing, though: the media couldn’t find out. Eliott had faced far too much scrutiny, they didn’t need to report on this very personal and tragic detail. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucille was there, then she was gone. I was so out of it I don’t even know what she said. I think they pumped some pain meds into my system, or something. 

The morning after, everything felt better and worse all at once. There was a pit in the bottom of my stomach wondering how I ever could have almost done such a thing. I wasn’t thinking about anyone else, really, I’d just needed a way out and this was the only one I could find.

But Idriss was there in the chair beside me when I woke up, and he didn’t wake me up with a lecture or a face of disappointment, just a smile and the tightest hug I’d ever received. 

He did tell me if I ever scared him like that again, he’d kill me himself, which I thought was fair. I wanted to promise him it would never happen again, but I didn’t know for sure. I didn’t want to ever get to that place again, I knew that much.

I asked him where Lucas was, but judging by his face that was not the question he expected. He told me Lucille had kicked everyone out, but that they’d all been there, and that they all wanted me to know how glad they were that I was alive and how much they loved me. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

When I told him Lucille had kicked everyone out, he looked terrified, leaned over and whispered like the government was watching, “Is she still here?”

I told him no, I’d sent her home, but she’d be back whenever he wanted her there. I didn’t have to understand why he loved her, but he did.

**Eliott Demaury:**

The pit in my stomach was telling me that I never really wanted to see her ever again, and I knew that was mostly my heightened emotions talking, but it was partially true. I don’t want this to sound like I’m blaming her for anything, because at the end of the day it’s no one’s fault, really. I just want to make sure people can learn from my mistakes and recognize that kind of manipulation before it’s too late. We had our good— great even— moments, but in the end that’s not enough. It should never be enough, for anyone. I was lucky enough to have people in my life who could see this better than I could, and helped me get out of such a toxic situation, because I honestly didn’t want to. I felt like I needed her, that I was inept without her help and input, because that was what she’d instilled in me so often I’d started to believe it. She would always say that she knew me by heart, and it took me a while to realize that, in the hands of the wrong person, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

I hate that I let it happen, but even saying that, that i ‘let it happen’, places the blame on me when that’s not how any victim of a similar situation should ever feel. I don’t know what Lucille is up to now, but I hope for her sake that she was able to get some help. She wasn’t a bad person, underneath it all.

I wasn’t either, I’d done really shitty things to some of the people I cared the most about it, but I wasn’t going to pretend that was just the way I was, that I was satisfied with that kind of life. I wanted to be better, for the people I loved, and for myself.

**Lucille Valentine-Rousseau:**

They didn’t tell me when he’d gotten released from the hospital or anything, but I didn’t try to go after the first day. I didn’t want to deal with Idriss manipulating Eliott to his whims or whatever. 

A week later, I was served divorce papers. I nearly laughed, because it  _ had _ to have been a joke. But it wasn’t. So then I became furious. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Eliott moved back in with me, and he was there when Lucille showed up screaming at my door. Thank god I’d moved into a bigger, more secluded place by then, because the neighbors at our old place would have had a field day with all she was saying.

Just hearing her voice, Eliott looked like a small child being yelled at by his mother for something he didn’t do. I’d only begun to understand bits and pieces over the week since he’d been discharged, but I understood even better once she showed up.

I couldn’t believe I’d let that happen to him. I should have been there, once I found out that he was in Italy with her, or even when she’d sunk her claws in less than a month after he and Lucas had called it quits. All I could do at the moment was be there for him, and make sure she  _ wasn’t _ . 

**Lucille Valentine-Rousseau:**

At least the divorce was easy. I didn’t get enough money from him for what he’d put me through, but I got to keep our house. Maybe I would have fought it more, but there were plenty of men out there much better than Eliott Demaury, with much better names and reputations— and without mental problems— and I was young and beautiful, so I decided to take it as a good thing that I didn’t have to deal with him anymore. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Everyone came over a few weeks after I was released from the hospital. Idriss told me they’d all wanted to see me sooner, but I hadn’t been ready to face any of them quite yet. Lucas especially. 

I was officially divorced from Lucille, but I didn’t think I’d lead with that. I needed to be alone for a little while, even if Lucas was the name that occupied every one of my thoughts since he’d stood by me in the hospital and said all those beautiful things to me.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t know if he’d remember what I said, and I equally wanted him to remember and to not remember. 

I mean, it was a lot to put on him after something like that, but I didn’t want to wait to say it all and lose my nerve. Mostly, I just wanted him to be happy, whatever that happiness entailed. Even if it meant he’d be moving back to Italy with Lucille and never speaking to me again.

**Manon Demissy:**

I hadn’t handled it well. I was the only one who’d known how bad things had gotten for him, but I was so desensitized I thought it was normal, to an extent. That’s not an excuse, but it’s all I have to say for myself. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

It wasn’t overwhelming like I’d thought it would be. It just— it just felt like home. 

**Emma Borgès:**

We attacked Eliott with the biggest hug imaginable, and I think everyone was crying. He had the audacity to apologize, but we didn’t want to hear it. We said that we were sorry too, but he said that we had nothing to be sorry for. We couldn’t have seen something he didn’t want anyone to see, he said. That was fair, but we were still sorry. 

**Basile Savary:**

He told us he’d divorced Lucille, and everything got so quiet I swear you could hear everyone’s individual heartbeats. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I looked at Lucas, because how could I not have looked at Lucas?

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It didn’t concern me. If he was comfortable sharing why, I’d listen, but it wasn’t about me, and I didn’t want him to think that I thought it was.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I knew about Lucille, but I was glad to hear him talk about it with such overwhelming clarity. I knew he was in a healing stage, but without her pressing him down, he already looked so much lighter. 

**Yann Cazas:**

For the first time in a while, I saw the Sunshine Boy back in action. I hoped he wouldn’t ever leave again. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

We spent quite a while there, but after a while I got everyone moving. Eliott looked exhausted, physically and emotionally, and I didn’t want to infringe on his space if he wasn’t feeling up to all the socializing. I understood that it would be tougher than I could ever even imagine to get back into the swing of things.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

He told me to stay, so I did. Idriss looked at me like  _ don’t you go trying anything, _ which should have been a given, but I gave him silent reassurance nonetheless. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wanted Lucas to stay because I wanted to be the one to tell him about everything, before he heard bits and pieces from Idriss or Sofiane or other people who thought they knew what they were talking about.

Luckily Lucille couldn’t say anything, because we’d outlined a few things in the divorce terms, lines that couldn’t be crossed. Idriss’ dad was a lawyer, an excellent one at that, so he had my best interests at heart. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

We laid on his bed like we used to, but instead of unease there was only an overwhelming sense of harmony in the air. He told me about his relationship with Lucille, his dark thoughts, and how the two had combined to an explosive moment that he’d only seen one real option to, in his head. He’d been seeing a therapist three times a week since the incident, he told me, and he said that he was working on never falling to that dark of a place ever again, because it wasn’t a feeling he’d wish on his worst enemies. He also got his meds adjusted to handle the ups and downs a little bit better.

I listened, and I held his hand when he teared up between words. It took an extraordinary amount of bravery, to do what he was doing, and I told him so once he finished. I also told him that I’d be writing him notes every day, just to remind him of how essential he was to my life, in case he needed a reminder. A lot of the notes were taken from the Sunflower Diaries, actually, the less hopelessly lovesick bits.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas was a pain in the ass sometimes, but his innate goodness poured out of his very core. I didn’t feel like he would judge me for anything I told him, even though I knew he and Lucille never liked one another much.

To end, I asked him if he’d meant what he said at the hospital.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It wasn’t like he hadn’t already known how  _ not _ over him I was, so I said, “Of course. Every word.”

The thing was, even though  _ yes _ , a lot of romantic intent coated my thoughts of him and  _ us _ , everything I said at the hospital also held up platonically. I just had so much love for him that sometimes I didn’t know what to do with it, but starting from that day on I’d spread a little bit more every day until he understood how deeply I felt for him, even on a purely non romantic level. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I told him I loved him too. Not like  _ that _ , because I wouldn’t be ready for that for a little while at least, but loved him nonetheless. He really was one of the most important people in my life, I’d have pulled the moon down from the sky if I thought it would make him smile even for a single second. 

I asked if it was ok, that I wasn’t ready for anything like  _ that _ , and that I might not be for a long while. I needed time alone to rediscover who I was without anyone hanging over me telling me who they thought I should be. I knew Lucas would never have done that to me, but he understood what I was saying. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I told him that, honestly, I felt the same way. Like, yes, I loved him, but it wasn’t love borne of passion and desire, it was borne of care and compassion. We never had to be  _ together _ again, so long as we promised to always stay together. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

We shook on it, and he smiled at me, so I couldn’t help but smile at him, accompanied by a small laugh.

He whispered, so quietly I almost didn’t hear it, “T’es beau quand tu rigoles”.

Now, my French was a bit rusty from disuse over the past however long, but I knew what he said. I hugged him to my chest and thanked him. Not for saying that, but just for everything. I was glad that, despite the ups and downs, life would always bring me back to him.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Amidst everything that happened, I completely forgot about the cover shoot and interview with Rolling Stone. The single was pretty much ready to be released whenever we decided to go for it, but that meant we needed the magazine and interview to go along with it and properly introduce Eliott as a part of the group.

**Eliott Demaury:**

They tried to reschedule, but the truth was that I was up for it. I’d been cooped up resting for a few weeks, and I was ready to try for some sort of normalcy. Even just thinking about music made me feel better, so I also couldn’t wait to get back to writing with Lucas again. Without Lucille, too. I felt light for the first time in a long time. 

I mean, I had to get my meds adjusted, and start going to therapy multiple times a week, but it was all for the best. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I asked him roughly a million times, but Eliott said he was ok to do the shoot and interview, so I let him. Obviously Imane and I were there too, just in case he needed anything, even if that meant ditching the interview last minute. 

**Noée Daucet (journalist,** **_Rolling Stone_ ** **):**

I was surprised to see Eliott Demaury again for the interview, but they explained that they were using this piece to introduce him to the world as a member of the band, so I rolled with it. I liked Eliott Demaury’s music, and I liked Seven Minutes in Heaven, and I’d obviously liked the work they did together, so I was excited to hear more of it.

**Alexandre Delano (photographer):**

It appeared we were all destined to meet again. Can’t say I was mad about it. 

**Emma Borgès:**

So… I did a dumb thing.

While the others were doing their interviews, Yann in particular, I started talking to Alex, and one thing led to another, and well… yeah. In my defense, Yann and I weren’t dating or anything, we’d never said we couldn’t sleep with other people, but I still felt guilty. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

The interview went well, at least this time I think we all had answers prepared when we talked about what the song meant to us. I just went based off the music video, thinking about love at first sight and finding your soulmate and all that other nonsense.

**Manon Demissy:**

I talked a bit about the music, a bit about what to expect from us going forward. I didn’t really know the details of what our sound would be, we’d only recorded two and a half songs, but I said that it would be like anything they’d seen from us yet, and that it would be the best record we ever made. 

I was right, wasn’t I? 

**Yann Cazas:**

I never really liked interviews and photoshoots, but I knew it was a part of the job. I thought Noée was cool, too, so we had a good conversation while she was supposed to be interviewing me. 

**Basile Savary:**

I think I just talked about Maria a lot, which is probably why they cut most of my interview for the spread. I was fine with that, to a certain extent. Like, yeah, I knew I wasn’t as much a part of the band as Lucas and Manon, but I was still there. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I paid close attention to what Noée was signing, even though it meant nothing to me at the time. I was both scared and intrigued by the thought of it. I didn’t want to lose my hearing, but I also stopped to consider what it might mean to enter a new world most people overlooked. I thought I might like it. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Noée said she loved “Scrawny”, and I said that I was grateful she approved. And that she's given me such an iconic phrase to use. I told her that I credited her as a writer on the song, so she should get some royalties from it or something. I didn’t know how business worked, but I told Imane to talk to her about it too.

I also told her our album would be called  _ Polaris _ , because Imane told me to tell her that. I explained why we’d chosen the name, because it was a symbol of hope and light and we wanted people to remember that they were never truly alone in the world. I got a little choked up while we talked, thinking about Eliott, but I tried not to let it affect me too much. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

She asked about Lucille, which I’d been expecting. I was a bit embarrassed to announce that we’d gotten divorced after a year, but it had to be done, and Sofiane thought this would be the best way. We supposedly parted amiably, but that was a bold faced lie. I just hoped Lucille would go along with it too. Per the terms of our divorce, she wasn’t allowed to talk about my mental health or my suicide attempt, but I never knew if she’d actually stick to that agreement. 

Unfortunately, Lucille wasn’t the one I had to worry about. Noée had seen Imane and Sofiane talking— she could read lips— and they were saying something about my hospitalization, and ‘the incident’. I didn’t blame them in the slightest, and I didn’t really blame Noée either, but I froze, I didn’t know what to say about it. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I was standing by, and when he froze I extracted him to get ready for the shoot, thanking Noée for her time, even if I didn’t know why he’d gotten freaked out.

He told the rest of us, during hair and makeup, and Lucas immediately jumped out of his chair to go to talk to her. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I just told her to wait after that shoot, that I had something to add to my interview. She agreed, so I tried to calm my nerves in the meantime. The only thing that would outweigh Eliott’s story was if I came out, and I was willing to do that for him. 

**Alexandre Delano:**

Everyone seemed distracted during the photoshoot. It didn’t help that the girl they’d brought along to help with styling and posing spent the entire time trying to flirt with Noée.

**Alexia Martineau:**

I’d met Noée before, actually, but I didn’t know it was her. What can I say, though, she was beautiful, how could I not at least  _ try _ to pique her interest? 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

At least the end result for the cover photo was less disheveled than their first cover. Truthfully, I didn’t think anything would ever beat the FMOF cover and back cover of the album, but we were trying new things all the time. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I was relegated to the background. Again. It was like I didn’t even need to be there. 

**Emma Borgès:**

The cover was all about Lucas, Manon, Eliott, and Daphné. They were the video leads again, so it made sense to a point, but it was kind of annoying.

**Yann Cazas:**

Emma was in a weird mood after the interviews. She kept looking strangely at Alex, and she seemed more annoyed than she usually would have been about the fact that we were just background characters in whatever story they were telling. 

**Basile Savary:**

It was kind of funny, seeing Lucas and Daphné and Eliott and Manon posed together like couples when that was the furthest thing from the truth. Everyone knew about Lucas and Eliott, and most of us knew that Daph Bean liked Manon, and Manon for some reason still thought Charles was worth her time. They looked good on the cover together, though.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Daphné and I got a duo shot for the inside spread and we couldn’t stop laughing again. We were in all sorts of tender and romantic poses, and it was just so ironic to me that this was my ‘rockstar’ life. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I was worried about how Charles would react to the duo photos of Eliott and I, even though we’d both stated in the interview multiple times that we weren’t together and would never  _ be  _ together.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Manon seemed really tense, and I tried to get her to talk to me about it, but she didn’t seem like herself. I understood that all too well, so after the shoot I drove her home, to try to talk about it. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Manon looked so uncomfortable, and she was never like that. I could tell Eliott was worried, too, and he told me he’d call if she said anything I needed to know about later, so I was grateful for that. That he could be her Lucas for a little while. Just because she was dating Charles, didn’t mean I loved her any less, in more ways than one. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Noée was waiting for me, so I said what I needed to say, begging her to publish the information I told her and leave Eliott’s health out of it. 

**Noée Daucet:**

I was shocked to hear what he was telling me, about himself and Eliott. I felt awful that he’d think me capable of something like that in the first place, detailing Eliott Demaury’s personal struggles in an article for personal gain. I wasn’t that kind of journalist.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

She stopped me before I could go and reveal any and every secret I’d ever held dear. She told me she had no intention of sharing this story about Eliott or about me, unless it was something I wanted out there. I really didn’t. To my surprise, she took that to heart, and didn’t publish any of it. Even if it would have sold more magazines and gotten her name out there. I owe Noée Daucet a lot for that. Hopefully the “Scrawny” royalties are good enough as repayment of what she did for Eliott and me until I think of something better.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Manon still wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. She made me drop her off a street away from where she lived, too so Charles wouldn’t see I’d driven her home. It raised a big red flag for me, but I wasn’t going to do something that might have put her in any danger, so I did as she asked and called both Daphné and Imane as soon as I got home. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

We all knew Charles was bad news, but I never suspected Manon might be in danger. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I want to put it out there that there was never any violence in my relationship with Charles. Maybe there would have been, if it had gone on longer than it did, I can’t say for sure, but we never got to that point. I was more worried about what Charles would do to them than to me. He could make sure the name ‘Eliott Demaury’ was smited from existence if he really wanted to.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I couldn’t sleep at night thinking of Manon in a situation like that, so I told Lucas that he had to tell Manon what Charles had done to him. It was the only thing that I could think of to get her to see what we all saw. Love was blinding sometimes, sure, but whatever Charles felt for Manon, I don’t know if love is the right word for it. Obsession, maybe. Possession. I think he thought he owned her, and he liked that. He’d made her into his little doll, and both of them, to a certain extent had forgotten that she was her own person.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t want to tell her, because I didn’t know how she’d react. I also didn’t want her to think I was manipulating her. But then she called and told me she was coming over for dinner, because she wanted us to get back to where we were supposed to be. It felt similar to the end of the tour, and I wished that hadn’t been fucked up by Charles’ hold on her life, but you have to understand that I just couldn’t be around that, even if it meant losing part of my bond with Manon. It probably sounds horrible, that I could do something like that, but Charles fucking terrified me. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Everyone was acting so weird around me, and I just wanted my brother. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Daphy was out that night, I think she was in the studio with Alexia. She’d been working on a song because Imane had said she could do one for this album too, and I was excited to hear what she’d come up with.

Manon looked exactly like herself and nothing like herself, which was becoming increasingly common. 

I kept conversation light and surface level to the best of my ability. I knew what I was supposed to say, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It didn't feel right to bring it up when Manon was trying to get a reprieve from whatever she’d had going on. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I’d come over with a slight ulterior motive. I truly wanted to know why he disliked Charles so much he was willing to give up our relationship over it. I understood with Eliott, but I didn’t with Lucas.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Luckily or unluckily for me, she gave me an opening. Regretfully, I told her everything that had happened, with Eliott and I and Charles finding out and blackmailing me to end it or else he would end all of our careers. I couldn’t look at her, because I didn’t know what I would see, and I didn’t want to see if she took his side. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I was appalled. And furious. Everything seemed so clear, suddenly, all of Charles’ manipulation, the way he’d subtly driven a wedge between the two of us so this would never come out. So that he could shape me into his perfect little Barbie doll and no one would fight him on it because they were scared of what he would do to them. 

No one could have talked me down from how angry I was, and I didn’t want them to. I deserved to be angry, and so did Lucas. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Manon burned so bright that I could nearly see flames in her eyes. I was worried to ask, but she told me that we were going to ‘put that fucker in the dirt where he belongs’. I knew that was highly unlikely, but I was all in. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I was so blinded by anger that I let my guard down. I went home, fully intending on confronting Charles, but he wasn’t home. Just his brother, Nicolas. Nico. I didn’t like Nico for many reasons, one of them being that for some reason he was always at  _ my _ house, even when I wasn’t. I knew Charles had a key, so obviously he’d copied it for his brother. He also liked to throw parties with cocktails of drugs the likes of which I’ve never even heard of. I still didn’t drink or do any drugs, ever, but every time I talked to Charles about it, he said he’d talk to Nico, but then nothing happened.

I was raging, though, when I came home, and I was not really feeling like dealing with Nico’s shit. He had a bunch of people over, but when he saw how angry I was he told me he’d send everyone home, that he was sorry for taking advantage of my space. I don’t know why I believed him, but I guess I don’t know why I ever believed Charles about anything either. 

He took me to the other room to ‘calm down’, gave me a glass of water, and tried to talk to me about what was going on. I don’t remember anything after that. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Manon called me in the morning freaking out. She was rambling, nothing she said made any sense, so I yelled for Lucas and said we had to go over there immediately. Eliott was over already to work on music, for the first time since the incident, and he drove us over there, equally concerned about Manon.

The door was unlocked when we got there, which wasn’t like Manon at all, but she was the only one home. The house was in shambles, it looked like a mess that would take years to clean. I was worried about what else we’d find. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas started yelling for Manon, walking all over the place, and I realized he’d never actually been to her place. It filled me with a weird feeling, that I had to be the one to lead them to Manon’s bedroom. Lucas kept looking at me weirdly, and I think he would have inquired into it further had we not all been a bit on edge.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

We found Manon in her bathroom, sitting naked with her knees up to her chest in her massive bathtub. Daphné and Eliott said they’d leave us alone, but I don’t think Manon was in any state that she cared about modesty. She was shaking but she didn’t seem cold, so I grabbed her a robe that I assumed was hers and had her put it on while she explained why she’d called Daphné. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I couldn’t remember anything that happened, but— 

_ (Manon sighs) _

I didn’t need to remember.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

She couldn’t explain, and I couldn’t help but be perplexed at what had garnered such a change in the last twelve or so hours. When she’d left my place, she’d been perfectly fine— aside the wanting to chop Charles to bits part of it all. 

But then Daphné called to me from her bedroom, and I left Eliott with her to go see what was up.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

It was awful. There were dozens of polaroids scattered on her bed, all of her naked and passed out from the looks of it. There were some that her eyes were open in, but there was a glazed look in her eyes that told me that even if she was awake, she wasn’t the one in control. 

There was a note, too, that just said,  _ There’s more where that came from, xx _ . 

I assumed it was Charles, at first. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It was disgusting. You could clearly see that she was not in a consenting state of mind or body. I shuffled up all the photos as quick as I could and told Daphné to hold onto them. I wanted to burn them, but I didn’t know if we’d be able to report them to the police or something.

**Eliott Demaury:**

While I was in the bathroom with Manon, she asked me what it felt like to do drugs. If they made you forget things. I asked her if she’d done drugs, but she told me that she didn’t know, because she couldn’t remember anything after Nico gave her some water.

I had no idea who Nico was, and neither did Lucas or Daph when I asked them. 

Lucas took it upon himself to be a detective, and I obviously wasn’t going to let him go on a rampage alone, so I asked Daphné to stay with Manon while we searched for answers to what exactly had happened. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I had to ask if Nico had violated her in any way, but she just said she didn’t know. She kept apologizing too, like it was in any way her fault. We went back to the bathroom, because she didn’t want to be in her bed, and we sat on the floor, her with her head in my lap. I ran my fingers through her hair and sang a little song I’d been working on, because she didn’t want to talk more about what had or hadn’t happened yet, and I wasn’t going to force her to. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I don’t think I would have survived that without Daphné. A lot of my memory of that time, after Nico, is fractured, but the bits with her in them are clear as ever. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas was pissed, and rightfully so. I was pissed too, but someone needed to be steady just in case. There were pills and powders and alcohol and anything else your mind may be able to come up with scattered about, amidst a mess of food and clothes and furniture and whatever else Manon’s house had to offer. Lucas and I knew we couldn’t call the police, not with her house like this. She’d be implicated in whatever they found, even though I doubted any of it was hers. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Nico was Charles' brother, I’d heard Manon mention him a few times in passing. If Charles was a grade A asshole, this guy had to be an A plus. All I could think of was that he’d drugged her, it was the only explanation that made sense. Unfortunately, it would be hard to get proof, and at the end of the day it would be his word against hers, and we all knew who authorities would listen to. I hoped to god that those pictures were the worst of it, because my mind was thinking things that made me want to bash Nico’s head in with a rock and not even stop once he was dead. 

That sounds horrible of me to say, but he was a horrible person. Nicolas Munier deserves no sympathy from anyone for the things that he’s done, not just to Manon, but countless others. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

We moved Manon out discreetly, before anyone could come wondering where she went. She went to live with Sofiane, because we thought that was where Charles would be least likely to come looking for her. She didn’t want to bring any of her things with her, because she said none of them mattered to her anyway. All the things she cared about were either at the studio or in storage because Charles hadn’t thought they fit who he wanted her to be. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Imane got filled in on what was going on, and she told me, so I offered to let Manon stay with me as long as she needed. Imane said she’d stay over too, just to make Manon more comfortable. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I was going to kill Charles and Nico Munier.

**Manon Demissy:**

I don’t know how much time passed until I felt a little bit more like myself again. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Nico might have done, other than take those photos, which were bad enough as it was. I didn’t  _ think _ he’d done anything more, because I probably would have known, just from physical signs in the morning, because as far as Charles was concerned, I was waiting for marriage, and I hadn’t ever been with anyone else, intimately or otherwise. 

**Emma Borgès:**

Daphné, Imane, Alexia, and I spent a lot of time with Manon in the days that followed. We didn’t try to get her to talk or anything, we just wanted to be there for her. It was horrible that things like what happened to her happened all the time, we just didn’t know about it. Because the people like Nico always won, because they were men, and people like Manon were silly little girls who were ‘asking for it’.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

About a week after it happened, I got a letter in my mailbox addressed to Manon, and I had a feeling I knew who it was from. Inside there was another polaroid, accompanied by a note saying that if she didn’t meet him at the end of the week with two mil, he would send the photos to any and every newspaper, broadcast station, magazine, et cetera all over the country, and he’d be sure to tell them that she’d been the one in charge. 

I didn’t want to tell Manon about it, but I had to.

**Manon Demissy:**

Nico’s note switched something on in my brain. I knew that it was a man’s world, but how could I let myself be blackmailed and walked all over like this? How  _ had _ I been letting it happen, all this time? I knew I couldn’t take Nico down on my own, and there was no way in hell I was giving him the money I’d earned for myself, so that left me with one option. 

I had to get to Charles, and get him to do my dirty work. But I wasn’t going to be his bitch anymore. He wasn’t going to do this because he ‘loved’ me, and then use it to make me do whatever he wanted. No, he was going to do this because if he didn’t,  _ I’d _ leak the story to the press, my way. And it definitely wouldn’t hurt to mention that I had some of Nico’s drugs that I could plant on him if he didn’t do what I said. 

I didn’t have drugs, but I was betting on him not calling my bluff. Maybe that was blackmail too, but I was fed up. They didn’t get to win. Not over me, not over Daph, not over Eliott, not over Lucas, not over anyone. From here on out, it was going to be our way or no way, and Charles was just going to sit back, collect his check, and leave us the fuck alone. 

Who was the press going to believe, the it girl of the eighties, or her boyfriend? In all honesty, I didn’t know, but he’d done his job well in making me such a force in the world that people wanted to protect me and worship the ground I walked on, so I’d let him take his chances, if he dared.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Manon told me her plan, and I’ll admit, I was wary. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her, I didn’t trust  _ him _ . He was a master manipulator, and I didn’t want her to fall back into that. But she told me to trust her, so I did. 

**Charles Munier:**

Fucking bitch. I never should have been in a position to let her get away with that, but she did. I had to fold, because I couldn’t go to jail for the crimes of my brother who, by the way, didn’t even rape her. He just had some issues, like those bandmates of hers she loved so much. Surely the same sympathy should have been awarded to him that was awarded to the psycho Demaury or her [redacted] brother. 

**Manon Demissy:**

He had the audacity to pretend he was outraged by what his brother had done, but by the end of our conversation he was mere seconds away from dropping to his knees and begging for mercy. I don’t care what he says about me now, or what he’ll say in this interview, because at the end of the day, he’s just a washed up trust fund baby and I’m Manon Demissy. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

The girls and I listened just outside the door, just in case she needed backup, but she did not need our help in the slightest. Manon has always been such a badass, but I’m pretty sure she even threw her drink in Charles’ face when she was done, so badass squared. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I didn’t meet with Nico, but I did file a restraining order. I actually think he’s in prison now, for tax fraud or something, which is a fitting end to his story. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

With everything that had been going on, we all forgot we were supposed to be releasing a single any day.

We ended up releasing it on my birthday, because I was proud of the work we’d done and it was a good way to kill two birds with one stone. Eliott’s birthday had been overshadowed by all the stuff with Manon, but I don’t think he cared about that. None of us cared about anything but making sure she was ok.

**Eliott Demaury:**

We had the video release slash Lucas’ birthday party at Lucas and Daphné’s place. Manon was in the process or moving in there too, now that we weren’t worried about Charles or Nico trying to find her and do anything to her or threaten her. They had to sacrifice their music writing bedroom, but we never used that room anyway, so it was pretty much already ready for Manon to move into. I don’t know what she did about her place, but I think she sold it discreetly, working with Idriss and Imane’s father to make sure that nothing they possibly found there would implicate her in any way. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

The video release was jovial, but tinged with unease. We were all proud of our work, but it felt weird to be celebrating when Manon had just gone through something so dark. She was the one that pushed to have a little party though, saying she wanted things to get back to normal.

**Manon Demissy:**

Yeah, there was lasting trauma, of course there was, but I would never get anywhere if I let myself dwell in it. The only way out was forward, and I had the people I loved the most in the world by my side, so I felt like I just might be alright.

Eliott referred me to a therapist too, and I took him up on the offer. If I’m grateful for anything in that situation, it was starting therapy. I honestly think everyone in the world should go to therapy, because sometimes we all just need a little extra help, and there’s nothing wrong with admitting that. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

The video dropped on MTV, and I could tell that this was  _ it _ . Everything that they already were was about to be multiplied by ten. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Normally I would have been paying attention to the music and the madness of it all, but I couldn’t. I wanted to surprise Eliott with a little thing to celebrate the birthday we’d all been too preoccupied to properly celebrate.

I wanted to show him that I remembered, and that I cared. I still left him notes every day, sometimes with the simplest things, or stupid jokes written on them, but I knew he kept every one. Sometimes he gave me little drawings in exchange, like he used to, where he drew us and all of our friends as animals. As always, I was a hedgehog, he was a raccoon. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

While everyone was chatting and drinking and lounging around, Lucas pulled me aside and took me up to the roof. I never knew there was anything up there, but he’d set up some fairy lights and flowers and a little table with a cake on it. The icing said ‘Happy Birthday Old-iott’, which only made me laugh in exasperation. I was only twenty six, that wasn’t old at all in the grand scheme of things. Hell, look at me now. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

He  _ was _ old. So were Imane and Sofiane and Idriss and Alexia, but the only person aside from Eliott I could call old without losing my kneecaps was Alexia. Well, probably Sofiane too, but he was too nice, I would have just felt bad about it. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

He sang me happy birthday in this soft, sweet voice. Once in English, once in French. I told him that I should have been the one giving him cake and singing happy birthday, and he just looked at me, all offended, and said, “I hope so. I plan on eating this cake too, but I’m not doing that until you sing to me, old man.”

So I did. Once in English, once in French. Then he dug in with his hand because he’d forgotten silverware downstairs and was a chaos demon at heart. I followed his lead.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

We ended up laying on our backs, side by side, looking up at the stars. At Polaris. It felt so close, but so far. After a while, sitting there in silence, he asked me if I was really afraid of the dark, like I’d told him at the hospital. I think I laughed, because of course that was what he remembered, but I said that yeah, I was.

**Eliott Demaury:**

We’d had an unspoken agreement not to address it or talk about it anymore, but I wanted him to know that I’d heard him. Even if I wasn’t ready for what that love he’d shown me might entail, I’d heard and appreciated every word. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

He told me, “Hm, that has a nice ring to it, huh? We should make a song out of it.”

I asked what he was referring to, and he said, “The boy who was afraid of the dark.”

_ (Lucas smiles) _

We did make a song out of it. And I knew what he was saying without saying.

**Eliott Demaury:**

The song felt like a promise, to one another. 

_ (Eliott sings) _

_ “I, I'm afraid of everything / I'm afraid of everything / I'm not afraid of you / And time, it changes everything / It changes everything / And so I wait for you” _

I mean, that was just the chorus. Pretty transparent.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

“The Boy Who Was Afraid of the Dark” was only titled as such because of the night on the roof. Imane tried to get us to rename it “Afraid of Everything” which probably would have made more sense, but this was a personal title between Eliott and I, and neither one of us would let it go. It was also sort of a metaphor for Eliott and I’s personal struggles, his with his mental health, mine with my sexuality. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

That’s what I get for working with creatives, I suppose. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

“I Think I’m In Love” was bigger than any of our previous songs, even “Minute by Minute”. A lot of people were appalled to see Eliott make out with boys and girls, a lot of people were ecstatic. We were basically untouchable, and I wanted to broach coming out with Imane again, but I decided to wait until after the single hype died down a bit. I was playing a part in it, sure, and Lucas didn’t like me like that either, but it would ruin some of the magic for people if they knew our connection wasn’t real. Well, our connection  _ was _ real, but not in the way they thought. 

**Basile Savary:**

I couldn’t go  _ anywhere _ without getting recognized anymore. It was crazy. And sort of annoying, if I ever wanted to go out with Maria or any of my bandmates.

**Emma Borgès:**

My keys in “I Think I’m In Love” were a hot topic apparently, and I was getting more attention as a part of the band than I ever had. I did a couple interviews for small slots in magazines and newspapers, and it felt nice to be appreciated like that, even if it wasn’t much. I wouldn’t have traded places with Lucas, Manon, Eliott, or Daphné, that’s for sure. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I was dumb and reckless, drunk on the high of our exponential fame but terrified of my own future. People recognized me, but I didn’t realize it, which was perhaps my downfall. 

I was buying weed from a guy I’d habitually bought weed from, but he knew who I was, other than the guy that bought weed from him. He wanted me to pay more than the weed was worth, and I gave him pushback because his weed wasn’t worth what he was asking for. 

Pushback came to shove— literally— and next thing I knew I was lying on the pavement with my glasses smashed beside me, everything hurt, and all I could hear was a faint ringing. 

That was when I lost the hearing in my right ear.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Arthur showed up at my place looking like he’d just been mugged, and on top of it, he couldn’t hear a thing. Now, I didn’t know he’d already lost the hearing in his left ear, because Arthur has never been the most forthcoming, but I drove him to the hospital in the middle of the night because I didn’t know what else to do. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Receiving another call from Imane that one of our band members was in the hospital felt like a sick sense of deja vu. Eliott had been staying over most nights because we were struck by inspiration at the oddest hours, and I saw his face go pale when Imane said Arthur was in the hospital. It was clear he didn’t want to go back there, but he obviously wanted to be there for Arthur.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wasn’t ready to revisit it so soon. Lucas said Arthur wouldn’t hold it against me, but I was still insecure about it.

**Manon Demissy:**

I hadn’t talked to Arthur about his hearing loss in a while, and I felt bad that I’d, for the most part, let it go ignored. Daph, Lucas, and I went to the hospital together, but Eliott stayed home.

**Yann Cazas:**

How had Arthur gone ten or so years without telling at least Manon, Lucas, and I about his hearing loss? How had we not noticed? 

In retrospect, some things made more sense, like the way he’d always lean into conversations with his right ear, or how sometimes he’d get this panicked look on his face and stray away from all conversation. Emma and I were the only ones still living with him, though we were more or less living in one place while he was in the other, but I felt terrible he hadn’t trusted us enough to share.

**Basile Savary:**

He told me about his left ear during the first tour, but I more or less forgot about it. He didn’t tell me things were getting worse overall, or that he might go completely deaf.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I had the foresight to call ahead and make sure Arthur would be put in a private wing, and make sure the rest of the band would come in a rear entrance or something so people wouldn’t recognize them and spread news we didn’t need getting out. Doing anything with them as famous as they were now was quite the task. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I don’t remember much of it, other than the fact that I was more scared than ever. Hearing nothing is very jarring, if you’re not used to it, and I wasn’t. Before, I’d always known in the back of my head that it would come back, but now, I wasn’t so sure.

**Emma Borgès:**

Imane sent us all home in the morning, because she thought it was stressing Arthur out more to have us all there. She was probably right. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

They told me they could get me on a treatment for a week to see if I could repair the damage, but if that didn’t work, I’d need to consider hearing aids. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t know if it was supposed to be business as usual without Arthur. We had just started working on the production for “The Boy Who Was Afraid of the Dark”, and while I knew that I could take over on drums, I felt weird about leaving Arthur out of the process. We’d let things halt when Eliott was in the hospital, and then again when Manon was dealing with Nico and Charles, so I figured we owed it to him to wait. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

This album was never going to get finished.

**Manon Demissy:**

Daphné kept writing music in the meantime, I was the only one she shared it with. She wanted the opening track on the album, and she’d written a really great song, but I didn’t know if it would match up with Lucas and Eliott’s vision. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I wrote a lot of songs, a lot of them about Manon. You guys know one of them, we released it on a demo years after  _ Polaris _ and I sang it on the tour with her. I wrote that one during her Charles phase, actually, and it ended up being about being in love with your best friend who’s dating someone that you don’t like. He doesn’t treat her how she  _ should _ be treated, and you want to save her from it. Lucas saw right through me. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Sometimes I wondered if Manon  _ truly _ didn’t know how Daphné felt. It didn’t seem possible to me.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

The song I wrote as the album opener was originally titled “Raw”, but we changed it to “Enter Polaris” later on. I think the only reason Lucas let me have it was because of how much he himself felt when he listened to it. 

In the most basic sense, it was about being your truest self and not being ashamed of who that is. In many ways it was a ‘coming out’ song for me, showing that I was confident in my sexuality and who I was. That was more or less true in other ways, I was still struggling with disordered eating a bit, but that wasn’t something I needed to include in a song. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I was the one who convinced Lucas to consider “Enter Polaris”. I never felt that title matched the song at all, but I knew why we changed it, and fans never seemed to have a problem with it. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It hit a little too close to home, was the thing. It was everything I wasn’t. There’s a line in there that says “You know I’m terrible at putting on a show”, and it was so the opposite of me that I felt like a massive fraud. I was excellent at putting on a show. But that was why it was Daphy’s song, not mine. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I stayed with Arthur in our apartment while he was taking his treatment, to make sure he had everything he needed and whatever. He was in quite the mood the whole time, but I didn’t blame him. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

The treatment didn’t work. Which either meant my career was over, or I needed to wear hearing aids. I knew which option made more sense, but I hated the thought of people looking at me different or thinking that I was ‘less than’ for something out of my control. 

All I have to say to those kinds of ableist assholes who  _ would  _ think things like that now is this:

_ (Arthur signs ‘fuck you’ in American Sign Language) _

Did you get that?

**Noée Daucet:**

I ran into Arthur through my friend Camille. Apparently Arthur was friends with his boyfriend, Mika, who owned the bar we both frequented. He was obviously having a tough time, and I decided it wouldn’t hurt to take him under my wing a bit, to show him that the hearing world wasn’t the only one worth existing in.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I’m so grateful to Noée, she’s one of the best friends I’ve ever had. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I was jealous that Noée and Arthur were spending so much time together, because I thought they were into one another. I wanted Noée to look at me like that.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Noée was super into Alexia, and while she taught me sign language, I’d try to teach her how to flirt with Alexia without combusting. Little did I know that they’d already hooked up once, and were both just too scared to make the first move in addressing that it was something they’d like to happen again.

**Alexia Martineau:**

I took sign language lessons from Camille, because I wanted to be able to communicate with Noée in a way she was comfortable with. I knew she could read lips, but I wanted to show her I was willing to immerse myself in what was important to her too. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I was always pretty out of touch with what was going on in everyone’s personal lives, but I did know that they were living out roughly three or four romcom scenarios at any given moment. Although, I’m not one to talk, because things with Imane were going great. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

The band was my priority, but once Arthur got his hearing aids, it looked like they were all back on track again. Obviously there would be a bit of an adjustment, because the hearing aids were new to him, but it looked like everything might work out. I used that extra time to spend with Sofiane, who I was allowing myself to fall for. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Sofiane and Imane were so whipped for one another. It was cute, they both deserved it. They made me believe in soulmates, because it was so obvious that was what they were.

**Eliott Demaury:**

As we got back into writing, we circled back to a song Lucas had started before my— incident. 

_ (Eliott winces) _

I still don’t know how to say it. ‘Incident’ sounds so formal, like something I’m trying to hide. Which, I suppose I was, until now. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

“Curiosity” was back in action. And now that Lucille was out of the picture, I didn’t feel as weird about sharing it. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas described it to me as the moment two people share an experience so intimate it can never be matched or imitated, and that’s how they know that home is wherever the other person is. I didn’t want to assume he felt that way about me, but I also knew better than to think it wasn’t. 

He was pouring his heart out day after day, and I kept leaving him hanging. I know we’d both decided we weren’t ready for something new, much less with one another, but when we were writing songs like “Curiosity”, it was hard not to feel the pull from my heart to his. 

**Yann Cazas:**

They were both so clearly into each other in a way that was palpable in the air. It was insufferable to work with, because it couldn’t be escaped. Though that could have been due in part to some of the other relationship nonsense going on in the group, including Emma and me.

I’d finally asked her to be my girlfriend, for real, because it had been years of us fucking as friends or whatever, but we basically lived together. We were dating without calling it that, and I wanted to just call it that already. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I think I might have been a little bit in love with Yann, but I also knew I wasn’t the type of person to be in love, if that makes any sense. It was all well and good in theory, but I hated the messiness, and I wanted to make sure I never lost Yann because he was a really important person in my life. 

I talked about it with Manon a lot, even though things were technically under wraps, but she could never understand why I didn’t just go for it. I couldn’t explain it then, I can’t really now, but I just had this feeling in the pit of my stomach that being together would ruin us. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I talked to Arthur about it, because he was the only one who knew about Emma and I, but he would always end up looking me dead in the eye and taking out his hearing aids when I got too rambly, something that I did  _ not _ appreciate, but is kind of a power move.

**Basile Savary:**

It felt weird that I was the only one actually in a relationship, and in love, even though that was what most of our album was about so far. Now that Lucille and Charles were out of the picture, Maria and I were the last couple standing, unless you count Imane and Sofiane.

Well, and then the Daphné and Lucas thing happened. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Somehow the media caught wind of the fact that Lucas and I lived together, and we never really considered how that would look from the outside. All of a sudden the world was convinced we were dating, and we had no choice but to go along with it. It was simultaneously the worst and best time for me to come out, and neither of us wanted to risk the ‘worst’, so we just pretended without confirming or denying anything. We decided to let people fill in the blanks themselves, see what they came up with. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Dating but not actually dating Daphné was interesting to say the least. For the most part we just laughed about it, but it was still weird to see our faces on magazines out to dinner and have people construe that as a date or decide that we would be getting engaged any day now. I think the only reason people didn’t think the same of Manon and Eliott was because the downfall of their relationships with Charles and Lucille weren’t publicized.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

It was weird. Lucas was somewhat used to it because of his thing with Chloé, but that had never reached this magnitude.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was worried again about Chloé saying something about me. Even though I wasn’t saying that Daphné and I were together, I wasn’t saying we weren’t, and I didn’t want her to think I was using Daphné and she needed to defend her honor or something. I never heard from her again after we broke up for the second time, though, so I guess that was one bullet dodged. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

It was kind of… hilarious? Watching the whole world believe Lucas and Daphné were Hollywood’s next it couple. I mean, it probably wouldn’t have been, if I didn’t know what I did or if Lucas and I were still at a bad place in our relationship, but as it was, I just liked to tease him about it. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott would always set up fake dates for Daphné and I and talk about how cute we were together but it was hard to be annoyed because it was really just adorable. Weirdly, Manon was the only one with a problem with any of it.

**Manon Demissy:**

I didn’t know why I cared, I knew that obviously Daphné and Lucas weren’t ever going to be together, but something didn’t sit right with me about the whole thing.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

If I didn’t know better, I would have said Manon was jealous.

**Eliott Demaury:**

We had six songs for the album at that point, but we were thinking we wanted eleven. Both of our first albums had eleven, and  _ Minute by Minute _ had twelve because of the feature, so it seemed like the right amount. It was fall of ‘86 at that point, I think, which meant we were making decent time, considering everything that had happened in the year that we’d been ‘working’ on the album. Imane wanted to push for a summer or fall release in ‘87, which I thought was doable. She also wanted to have another music video ready for release by that time, but we didn’t know what song we’d use yet. Selfishly, I didn’t want to use any more love songs, because I didn’t want to have to film another romance based video with Manon. I loved working opposite her, but I think both of us had our eyes elsewhere. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

As fun as it was to joke about the media’s perception of Daphné and I, some of it did get to me, and by get to me I mean kept me up at night. Now, this was nothing unusual, my sleep habits always have been and always will be about as bad as they come, but it got a bit worse during that time. 

I was just overthinking all the time. Overthinking how much I wished I was confident enough to say the reason Daphy and I weren’t dating, overthinking how much I still felt for Eliott, overthinking my fame, overthinking how somehow everyone’s lives had gotten worse as we’d gotten more successful, just everything, basically, and then some.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I knew Lucas wasn’t sleeping because I’d always hear him creeping to the music room on nights I stayed over. He’d always offered his bed to me, as friends of course, but I knew what it would do to me to be that close, so I stayed on the couch often. Idriss always used to joke that I was his ghost roommate, which I suppose was true enough.

As quiet as he tried to be, though, Lucas was no ghost, and I knew that his solution to sleepless nights was to create, so I heard him go in there night after night. The room was soundproofed, thankfully for the people who  _ did _ sleep. Sometimes I was one of them, sometimes I wasn’t.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I wrote “Insomnia” during one of my sleepless nights. It was long before I got officially diagnosed with insomnia, but it was still a good name for a song. It was a pretty simple song, lyrically, but we played around with the instrumentals a lot. Basically, it was just a song about all of my anxieties and sleeplessness and my worry of my dissatisfaction with a life that, from the outside, looked perfect.

Even so, I didn’t want it to be entirely hopeless, so I tied in “Minute by Minute”’s message that we’ll be fine, and that even if we’re lost, we’ll find our way eventually. I didn’t talk to Eliott about the song until it was entirely written, because I didn’t want input on this one. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I’d been writing my own song, too, that I didn’t tell Lucas about. I’d been sitting on it for a while, actually, pretty much since everything that had happened with me, and then my divorce from Lucille. I’d been thinking a lot about Lucas telling me that only I could feel what I felt, and how Lucille had tried to take that from me and convince me that whatever I was feeling was invalid, even when it wasn’t. 

I called it “Impulse”. Actually, originally, I wrote parts in French, because the title that was coming to me was “Coup de Tête”. Basically, it means the same thing as impulse, but you know how translations can be tricky sometimes because it could also mean ‘headbutt’, which was  _ not _ my title of choice.

_ (Eliott laughs) _

In the most basic sense, I wrote it about my experience with my mental illness and how, through it all, the ups and downs, I was alive. I might not have felt it in the lows, or felt it too much in the highs, but at the end of the day I was just another person living their life even if sometimes my brain felt like it was floating miles away from my body down on earth. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

We both came clean about the secret songs we’d been writing the same day, and were both equally relieved that the other person had been doing the same thing. Eliott’s song was genius, and I was already thinking of the possibilities of where we could take the instrumentals. The brass we ended up using on that one… impeccable. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas’ song was incredible, equally hopeful and hopeless. It was a song that I knew would probably be underrated on our album, but would have longevity. Since we’d written these two songs solo, we decided to sing them solo on the album. 

It gave Lucas an excuse to micromanage the production, at the very least. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I’d never been handed that amount of incredible songs before, and I’d worked with them on three other full albums. Hearing them come up with the instrumentals and figuring out the ways I could enhance that in production was so fun for me, even if Lucas was breathing down my neck the whole time. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I just wanted everything to be perfect, exactly how it sounded in my head.

**Basile Savary:**

Just like that, we only had two or three more songs to add to the album. It was crazy how quickly things were coming together now that life wasn’t so crazy.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Sofiane and I were in the studio with them most of the time, and we’d been trying to figure out which song to use for the next music video. “The Boy Who Was Afraid of the Dark” was a good option, because it was so raw and real, especially in the way Lucas and Eliott sang it on the track, but I didn’t know if that one was too personal. I also didn’t want the other members of the band to feel like it was just the Lucas and Eliott show.

“Infiltration” was the other option we were thinking of, if we wanted to highlight Daphné more, because “Enter Polaris” was great but it wasn’t the single we were looking for. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Sometimes I would look at my life in utter confusion, wondering how exactly I’d gotten there in the first place. A few random strokes of luck, I guess. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I knew it probably wasn’t going to end up on the album, but Daphné showed me a song she was working on, “Susie Save Your Love”, and I was all in on it. We changed the names from Manon and Charles to Susie and Marshall, but the sentiment remained the same. I sang it with Daphné when we were working through some instrumentals, and it was the first time I’d ever contributed vocal work to our music beyond oohs and ahhs and whatnot. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Things were hard for me, I won’t lie. I could hear, with the aids, but they sounded different in a way I wasn’t used to, so sometimes it could be difficult to react to sound in the way I was used to. Everything was sharper, sometimes to the point that it was unbearable. I could turn the volume on my aids up and down if I needed to, so that helped sometimes, but it wasn’t like what I was used to, obviously. Thankfully, as far as the music went, my intuition drove most of my process, so I didn’t feel behind or too different to make it work. 

I invited Noée to recording sessions, sometimes, to try to get her and Alexia to actually talk about the fact that they were both super into one another, but she didn’t really like being there and I didn’t blame her. Anyone outside of the band was, for the most part, ignored, and sometimes we forgot she was even there.

**Alexia Martineau:**

Noée invited me out to the Sun with her and Camille one night, and I didn’t know if it was a asking me out thing or a friend thing, so I was freaking out all day.

**Manon Demissy:**

We all knew Noée and Alexia were into each other, for the record.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

What I would have given for a girl to look at me like that… 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I wondered if that was how people felt with me and Eliott sometimes, and I hoped to god it wasn’t, that we were less of oblivious dumbasses. I doubted it, though. 

**Noée Daucet:**

Arthur finally caved and told me Alexia was definitely interested, so I went for it. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I was decent at sign language by then, so I taught Alexia a few things she hadn’t already been working on, because I knew Noée wouldn’t be expecting it. I was their number one supporter, I think. 

**Noée Daucet:**

The night went well. Really well. That’s all I have to say. This isn’t about me, this is about the band. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I don’t care if this interview isn’t about me, us women who love other women deserve it. I had a really amazing night with Noée, Mika, and Camille, and I went home with Noée. Sexy fun times ensued, what can I say.

**Yann Cazas:**

Noée and Alexia? Sure, why not. They were cute together. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I think seeing Noée and Alexia get together, and hearing Baz talk about Maria all the time, had Yann thinking about us quite a bit. He started pushing more about why we couldn’t just be together, in every sense of the word, and I was running out of excuses. I didn’t even know why I was still saying no, part of me wanted to say fuck it and just go for it.

**Manon Demissy:**

I think Arthur and I were the only ones who knew about Emma and Yann, which was probably for the best. I didn’t ever talk about it with him, so I didn’t know what he thought, but I was poor with advice when it came to this matter. Yann and Emma were very respectful of one another, and I didn’t know what to do with a relationship like that. On one hand, I didn’t see why they didn’t just go for it, but on the other, I knew it would be disastrous if they did and it didn’t work out. I mean, look at Lucas and Eliott. Though, I suppose if even  _ they _ could come back from it all, Yann and Emma could too, so maybe it was worth the risk. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Imane wanted to move forward with planning a video for “The Boy Who Was Afraid of the Dark”, but I didn’t want to, so I told Eliott we had to make a song so great it couldn’t be overlooked for our next video. That was how “People As They Are” was born. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

It was an angry song, but it was also fun, freeing. It was a song about accepting yourself for who you are despite criticism from yourself or others.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It was about doing things your own way, and kind of a middle finger to the people who didn’t like that. We called it “People As They Are” on a suggestion from Baz, actually. He’d always been the first to say that we just have to take people as they are first and foremost, and try to love them because of it. There were exclusions to this rule— Charles, for example— but I liked the idea.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Lucas was right in telling me to wait. “People As They Are” was a perfect single song. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I was back at it to direct for “People As They Are”. This one wasn’t going to be about just Lucas and Eliott, it was going to be equally about all of them.

We filmed it really informally, but on purpose. I wanted the video to look like a glimpse into their lives, a home video of sorts. Partly because I knew fans would eat it up, and partly because the sides of them I loved the most were the sides people didn’t normally see. 

Like Lucas and Eliott laughing so hard they both fell to the floor clutching their stomachs when they should have been writing music, or Daphné and Manon goofing off in the studio when they thought I wasn’t paying attention. Maria even made an appearance, all her parts in the video with Baz were so sweet they gave me a toothache. Arthur was a lovable dumbass, turning anything he could find into a drum set while Yann and Emma played air guitar and air keyboard in the background. His hair was not purple anymore, the only problem I had with any of the footage. 

I got footage of them putting on a fake performance at Under the Sun, filled to the brim with a million extras we needed to sign a great many NDA’s. I also got footage of them in the studio, working on and performing the song. It all came together like a little diary of their lives, from the glitz and the glamour to the mundane, like the great blueberry bacon muffin incident that left Lucas dry heaving into the sink for hours. Manon and Daphné’s hands touching like they were realizing something about one another but trying to be subtle about it. They were the American dream, in a lot of ways, and it was my job to sell it. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I made a cameo in the video, because Eliott remembered that he lived with me for the sake of the video. It was fun, because it wasn’t fake. I mean, I’m an actor, I do fake all the time, but you know what I mean. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

It was crazy to me that the album was so close to completion. At least in the sense of writing all the songs. There was still a lot to do with recording and production, but they only needed two more songs to complete the album.

**Eliott Demaury:**

“Assume” was the second to last song we wrote for the album.

**Yann Cazas:**

“Assume” was a heavy hitter, and it’s always been a favorite of mine. That one was used a lot in movies and such after our album was released, because it has that sort of ‘indie coming of age’ vibe that people love. It wasn’t even what we were going for, but it was cool it worked out that way. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I could probably rest easy on my “Assume” royalties and be just fine for the rest of my life.

**Manon Demissy:**

That song, to me, was about the impacts of fame, incorrect assumptions, and feelings of being lost and alone. I think all of us related to it quite a bit, which may be why it ended up resonating with so many other people.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I mean, we say it in the song, but life’s too short to even care at all, you know? The message didn’t sink in for me back then, but I’m glad we got it out there.

The last song on the album was the perfect follow up to “Minute by Minute”, really. And the perfect closer for the album. We’d been set on ending with “People As They Are”, but this last song changed our minds. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I went behind everyone’s back and changed the title of the last song before the records went into production. I told Imane and Sofiane everyone had agreed to it, but that wasn’t true. It was just my truth. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Before they wrote the last song, we set up an album cover shoot with Alexandre Delano, because he’d always done a great job with the group.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Nothing would ever top our first album cover, in my opinion, but I liked doing photoshoots, so I was happy to do it.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Eliott had a really cool idea, and I’m so glad he shared it with me. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I’d always been fascinated with graffiti, and I thought it would be cool to have a celestial backdrop with silhouettes of each member of the band against the backdrop, and we could each stand in front of our silhouette. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I liked the idea, we all liked the idea but, of course, the best laid plans never go the way you want, do they? 

**Alexandre Delano:**

I got some great shots of all of them in front of the artwork, I really did, but then there was this moment while we were taking five that Eliott and Lucas just walked up to the mural and grabbed each other’s hands, for a split second, and looked at each other like this was the happiest they’d ever been, and I just knew that was the cover shot. It had to be. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was just really proud of us, and I wanted to make sure Eliott was proud too. He deserved it, I never would have been able to come up with that album on my own. He was the one that grabbed my hand, and I was so stunned that I just looked at him like he was my whole world. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I felt ready, even though I knew that wasn’t the right moment to say anything. I felt ready, and that was why I changed the title of the last song on the album.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

None of us were anywhere to be seen on the album front or back cover. There were photos of the rest of us on the inside, but Lucas and Eliott got the front, and then a shot of our painted silhouettes got the back. I was livid.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I made Alex crop out Eliott and Lucas’ hands, because we didn’t need to be sending a message that Lucas didn’t want out there, but it was still fairly obvious to anyone who had eyes. It was the perfect cover shot, though, so Sofiane and I both signed off on it. I just hoped the rest of them would understand, from a marketing angle, why that would sell so well. Fans had only known Eliott was a part of the band a little less than a year, and they were already all in on the Lucas and Eliott duo.

**Manon Demissy:**

Was I disappointed I wasn’t on the cover for a band I’d co founded? Yeah. I was. I know Lucas and Eliott hadn’t intended on that happening, or even knew that photo was being taken, but I thought Imane and Sofiane at least knew that there was more to the band than just the two of them. But whatever sells, I guess. Because  _ obviously _ we were so unknown we needed to rely on that. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I just didn’t know why they even invited any of us to the shoot if we weren’t going to make the cover. 

**Emma Borgès:**

So, the only reason I wasn’t concerned about the cover was the fact that I’d done a not so great thing again. 

In my defense, which I’m saying because I don’t really expect or want you to take my side, Yann and I weren’t together. He’d been asking, yes, but I hadn’t agreed. I had this electric chemistry with Alex, though, and it was something new and exciting and I went for it because I figured I didn’t have anything to lose and no one would ever have to know. 

**Alexandre Delano:**

Emma was something else. Some of the best sex I’ve ever had was with Emma Borgès, I’ll tell you that much.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I should have expected what happened with the cover to happen, but somehow I’d thought that, with our new video and everything, our band was more than Lucas and Eliott and their bullshit. We were a family as much as we were a band in a lot of ways, and while we were working I didn’t usually feel like a secondhand member, but it was hard not to when your face was on the inside cover of the album instead of on the front.

**Basile Savary:**

Maria always thought I should have stood up for myself more, when it came to things in the band. I didn’t see it like that. Yeah, there were moments that I thought,  _ really? Again?  _ But at the end of the day I was more successful than the great majority of people I knew, and I had found the love of my life, and I got to do what I loved with my best friends every single day, so I didn’t need more than that.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t know they were going to choose that photo for the cover, and I was kind of pissed about it too. It would send the wrong message, it would make people think Eliott and I were in love, and we weren’t. Right?

**Eliott Demaury:**

I didn’t deserve a spot on the cover, I’d been in the band just over a year. Technically two if you counted the time we were on hiatus, but I didn’t. I asked Sofiane to get them to change it, but he told me that wasn’t how it worked and that I should be excited to share the cover. I would have been, if it hadn’t been at the expense of everyone else. At least everyone was so worked up over the cover they didn’t notice the song title change for the last song. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It was supposed to be called “Work”. Ironically, “Minute by Minute” would have been a great title for this song had we not already used it.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I really liked that song, I did, and not just because Manon and I contributed to the writing process. It was a pretty Eliott and Lucas song, as far as songs went, but I think it meant something to Manon and I too.

**Manon Demissy:**

Things felt different, around Daphné, and I couldn’t pinpoint why. I felt this tug, in the pit of my stomach, when I was around her, but it didn’t feel like a bad thing. On the contrary, it felt  _ right _ . 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Sometimes Manon looked at me like she knew everything I was feeling. Sometimes she looked at me like she didn’t hate that I felt that way.

I told Eliott because he was always over at our place anyway, even though all the songs were written, and I didn’t want to worry about Lucas telling Manon. I trusted Lucas, more than most anyone, but they were the Lallemissy twins, it was different. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Anyone with eyes could see Daphné liked Manon, even if neither one of them said anything about it. Before Daphné had told me, I assumed Manon knew about it. The way she acted around Daphné couldn’t have been dismissed as platonic either, really. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott asked me if I thought Manon was into Daphné, and I just laughed before second guessing myself. I honestly had no idea. It had taken a little while to bounce back from her time with Charles, just as it had with Eliott and Lucille, but she seemed so much more herself than I’d ever known her to be. She was self assured and confident and badass and she knew exactly what she wanted and how to get it. I felt inspired, being around her.

**Manon Demissy:**

Lucas was different. He had this air to him that he’d never really had before. I don’t want to say it was confidence, because he’s always either had that in bounds or been really good at faking it. I think he finally realized that whoever he was, was enough. That even if he wasn’t ready to tell the world, it was enough for him to be who he was with the people he was closest to. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I’d thought about coming out publicly really seriously, but the album was about to release, and everyone thought Daphné and I were together, and I realized how much easier my life was when everyone believed that. I wasn’t intentionally living a lie, I was living my own truth, just privately, and it wasn’t my job to police what other people thought. I didn’t know when I’d decided it, subconsciously, but I knew that I never wanted any real relationship I had to be in the public eye ever again. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I slept with Lucas in his room sometimes, mostly because I knew he wasn’t sleeping and I wanted to be able to help if I could. Also, it freed up a room for Eliott to sleep in instead of sleeping on the couch. One night, we were just sitting there, around three in the morning, and I was feeling vulnerable, so I asked him how he’d known, for certain that he was gay.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t know why she was asking, and I didn’t entirely know how to respond. It hit me all at once, really. The first time I’d dated Chloé, I hadn’t had a clue. I just thought that maybe what I felt  _ was  _ love, and that love wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. 

I told her it had started with jealousy, because I’d seen Yann with a girl and for some reason the girl was the one I was mad about. I didn’t know Manon knew about Yann and Emma, so that was why I didn’t say who the girl was. 

I realized the reason I was feeling like that was because I wanted to be the one he looked at like that, and with that came the whole gay thing. At first I hadn’t thought twice about it, all I could think was that I wanted to be with him. The thoughts spiraled in soon after, about how being gay was supposedly wrong, and what would my mother have thought, and why couldn’t I just be normal, and I even tried to repress it for a while, but it made its way out eventually. 

Now, it was laughable to me that I could ever have thought I was into girls. They were beautiful, smart, funny, everything I should love, really, but so were boys. There was one boy in particular I thought I was destined to love so much it ripped out my insides and left me with nothing but a bleeding heart beating in synch with his.

**Manon Demissy:**

I understood what he was saying, but I didn’t know why, if he thought all those things about boys and girls, he didn’t just like both. I mean, I knew Alexia and Eliott felt that way, if not somewhat differently between the two of them, so I didn’t know what made a person straight, gay, or somewhere in between. My whole life, I’d never really cared for love or romance, and with Charles I thought maybe I’d found it, even if I hadn’t meant to. But that wasn’t love. Love was supposed to hurt sometimes, but not like that. 

Then there was Daphné, and I felt all these things when I was around her that I couldn’t explain, and sometimes I would catch a look in her eye and think,  _ what if I kissed her? _ But did that mean I’d been faking it with Charles? Or could I have felt both things in different ways? 

My love for Charles had consumed me to the point that I hadn’t known who I was without it. But once I let it go, it was freeing. I missed him sometimes, the parts that no one saw but me, because he could be sweet and loving when he wanted to be. That was the only reason I was with him at all, because he did have that side. 

I didn’t know if what I was feeling for Daphné could be called love, but sometimes it sure felt like it. Being with her felt like breathing in fresh air. I never wanted to spend a moment away from her, not because I had this intense infatuation and she promised me all these ideals neither of us could ever achieve, but because she was the most interesting person I’d ever met. I knew most everything about her, but I wanted to know more, I wanted to know it all. And I wanted her to know me like that too. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Manon started talking, and didn’t stop. I figured this was less about me, and more about her, so I listened. Pretty much everything she said surprised me, but I waited until she was done to say anything. 

First, I told her that whatever she felt with anyone was entirely valid, just so she knew, and second, I told her the way she was talking about Daphné was the way I felt about Eliott. And I knew, after nearly five years, that feeling was love.

**Manon Demissy:**

So, naturally, I freaked out. I didn’t even register that Lucas had told me he was  _ still _ in love with Eliott, even now. I mean, in some ways, I assumed he was, but they insisted they’d both moved on and were just friends, so I took that at face value most of the time. 

The thing was, I didn’t know what to do with a love like that. I didn’t want it to ruin me, like it had with Charles, or ruin her. The last thing I wanted was for her to ever be hurt, and I knew that was all that would ever happen if I told her how I felt. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I told her that as stupid and hard as it sounded, she just had to try. She’d never know if she never tried, and maybe it would end badly, but what if it didn’t? What if this was the feeling she’d been searching for her whole life?

**Manon Demissy:**

I said that I still didn’t even know if I fully believed in love, and instead of correcting or contradicting me, Lucas said, “But you believe in Daphné, right?”

I did. I believed in her so much I felt like my heart was leaping out of my chest sometimes. Lucas pulled me into a hug after that, the kind we hadn’t shared in far too long, the kind I never wanted to end.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

She hugged me back, and she said, “For what it’s worth, I think that if you were happy, Celine would have been happy. She probably is happy right now, seeing you being your truest self to the people you love the most.”

_ (Lucas blinks, looks away, and shrugs) _

I think Manon was right. I think she would have been really happy. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I talked to Alexia a little bit about her identity, and I started to think that maybe that was what fit me best, but I wasn’t entirely sure. She was curious about why I was asking, but I didn’t want to say anything about Daphné to her, so I just said I’d seen this girl that I’d been interested in and had been trying to figure out what it all meant for me. She and Noée were great about any and all questions I had, and I was envious of their relationship in many ways. They seemed so perfectly matched. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I knew we’d get Manon on our side eventually. If I’m being entirely honest, I never bought for one second that  _ any _ of them were straight, but I made my peace with Baz’s heterosexuality pretty early on. He was as good an ally as they came, though, so was Maria.

I’m endlessly disappointed we didn’t get Yann on our team. He had all the makings of a bicon, but he never strayed from the very straight path laid out in front of him. What a tragedy.

We didn’t get Emma either, another disgrace, but we did get Arthur, that beautiful bastard. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I spent a lot of time with Alexia, Noée, Camille, and Mika. I was getting pretty good at sign language too, and I loved learning it. We didn’t know anything about our next tour yet, but I’d asked Camille if he knew any people to come on the road with us as an interpreter for deaf or hard of hearing audience members, and Imane and Sofiane had both agreed that it would be an amazing way to make things more accessible for broader ranges of people. 

Spending time with them, I felt freer to experience new things and figure myself out without being looked at any differently, because they were supportive in so many ways. Just before the album release, I started to think that maybe I wasn’t as straight as I’d always thought myself to be, and there were quite a few instances that stuck out in my mind from earlier in my life, even in my childhood, that pointed far away from heterosexuality. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

You all know, obviously, that Arthur was the bicon I never got out of Yann. He accepted this new thing he’d learned about himself with much more ease than I’d ever imagined he would, and really didn’t care who knew, even if he didn’t come out publicly until after everything with the band. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

In some ways it felt silly for me to even care about who I was attracted to when I’d dealt with a lot of other, more serious, shit in my life, from my dad beating me to me losing my hearing in both ears, and some more minor scuffles in between. I was already disowned, what else did I have to lose? 

Plus, the great majority of the people I hung out with were at least a little bit gay, aside from Yann and Basile. Maybe Emma too, I never knew with her. Manon hadn’t said anything to anyone either, but come on. She and Daphné looked at each other like Lucas and Eliott used to. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

The album release was drawing nearer and nearer, and with that came discussions of another world tour. Sofiane and I were deep in negotiations for it for weeks. He kept acting weird, though, and I didn’t know if it was about the tour or album or something else.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I was going to propose to Imane, and I was terrified. I loved her so much, I knew that she was my soulmate, and I could tell she felt the same. Every minute with her was my favorite minute of the day, and I didn’t want to wait much longer to turn it into a lifetime.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I knew that Imane and Sofiane had some issues in their relationship when the band was writing and making  _ Polaris _ . She didn’t tell anyone about them but me, because I was the only one she’d felt would truly understand. Sofiane had told her that he wasn’t religious, and it was obviously a very important part in Imane and I’s lives. She also didn’t know if our parents would let her be with someone who wasn’t a practicing muslim.

We had a great many conversations, one on one and with our parents, but I was rooting for the two of them the entire time. I’d only ever wanted the best for Imane, and Sofiane was the best, really. I never thought I’d have been hoping for my best friend to marry my sister, but I was. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Sofiane proposed to me on a quiet night, I think we’d just been reading together, enjoying each other’s company, and he said he had a question. I didn’t think anything of it, because we’d had a busy day of negotiations, I figured it had something to do with that.

But then he got down on one knee in front of me, with the ring that had been in my family for generations, and my mind went blank. I didn’t think of a single consequence of me saying yes, all I could think of was how much I loved him and wanted to be with him forever. So, I said yes. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Phone calls from Imane should have terrified me at that point, but I left this one screaming in excitement. She called, said, “Sofiane proposed, I said yes,” then hung up. Imane was full of power moves, but that one’s still my favorite. 

We threw them an impromptu engagement party, though we knew they’d eventually have another one in the tradition of Imane’s religion with her family and Sofiane’s family, but it felt fitting to have a little informal celebration with the band as well. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Lucas has always been a sweetheart, underneath it all. He was so sincere when he told me how happy he was for me, and I appreciated it more than I could say. Everyone was sincere, and they all made me feel the happiest I’d ever been. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Eliott cried when he told me how happy he was for the both of us. He said that we were the ones who made him believe in love and happiness when things got dark for him, and I cried too. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Idriss made fun of both of us for it. 

**Emma Borgès:**

Seeing Imane and Sofiane, and their happiness, it made me a little sentimental, a little romantic. I also had guilt eating me up from the inside about what had happened with Alex. Twice. So, I pulled Yann into the bathroom while everyone was out by the pool and I told him that I was all in. If he wanted to call it boyfriend and girlfriend, I’d do that, because I wanted to be with him and only him. 

It wasn’t a lie, as much as I’d felt during those stolen moments with Alex, Yann was everything I’d ever looked for in someone to love. Not that I’d been looking for someone to love, but when it fell into your lap, sometimes you had to give in. I mean, it had been what, five years? And we were still fucking without labels? Obviously it wasn’t  _ just _ fucking. 

**Yann Cazas:**

She said she still wanted to keep it between us for a little bit, maybe until the album released, but I was so happy that I didn’t care. I loved her so much, and I could finally show her in all the ways I’d been wanting to for years. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wanted to tell Lucas, then, but I waited. I wasn’t about to take away from Imane and Sofiane, not when they did so much for all of us every single day. Plus, he still didn’t know about the song title change, no one did aside from Imane and Sofiane, and I hadn’t even told them the reason I’d changed it. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott and I shared so many looks that said so many words without saying anything at all, and I thought that maybe he was at a place he could love me again too, but neither of us ever crossed that gap. I learned to live with it, wondering if I was stupid for waiting all this time for something that was probably never going to happen.

The only time I felt like closing that gap myself was on the anniversary of my mom’s passing. The past few years hadn’t been as painful as the first few, but it was still always a tough day. We spent the day in my bed together and he sang ‘Mon Cœur’ to me in French like I’d done all those years ago. Our silences stretched but they were comfortable, and in them was when I wanted to say fuck it and take what I wanted, but I knew that even if he was there, he wasn’t mine to take. He had to want it too. 

**Manon Demissy:**

A week before our album came out, Daphné came to me in the middle of the night and asked me to help her bleach her hair. I figured, why not?

It, um, was not so good for my resolve, because platinum blonde Daphné was so hot I could barely keep my eyes from popping out of my skull. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I don’t know why I did it, I just wanted to change up my look a bit. I’d never looked as rockstar as the rest of them, and the bleached blonde hair definitely upped that factor for me. I liked it a lot too, I felt like Marilyn Monroe for real and not a cheap version of her on the cover of an album we didn’t know would sell. In some ways it felt full circle. The night I dyed my hair, we also gave Manon a fringe. She looked so hot I nearly passed out.

**Manon Demissy:**

It was a look I hadn’t tried yet, and Daphné reacted favorably, so I liked it.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I go to bed, Daphné and Manon are fine, normal even. I wake up, and the two of them have platinum hair and fringey bangs, respectively, and look seconds away from jumping each other. I noted this observation, made some tea, and went back to my room. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Just like that, the album was out, and the video was set to be released at the album release party later that same day. Even in just a couple hours, records were being broken and tickets were being sold like crazy. It was insane, utterly insane. I’m not sure if it had anything to do with Eliott as a part of the band, or if they were just on that level, but either way, I cheered a non alcoholic beverage to it. 

**Basile Savary:**

They greeted us at the album release party like we were gods. It hadn’t even been a day, and everyone would have eaten out of the palms of our hands had we asked them to.

**Maria Savary:**

The Basile I knew was very different from this rockstar perception everyone had of him, and I thought it was kind of funny, to see them treating him like a living legend. He was, his talent proved that much, but it was still funny to me. He’d tripped coming out of the car when we got to the party, he wasn’t some infallible hero. It was why I loved him.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Manon’s stylist had dressed me for the party, and even though it was out of my comfort zone, I felt like it matched who I was on the inside. Yeah, I liked curled hair and pink dresses and roses and heart shaped lollipops, but I also liked feeling like I was the most powerful woman in the room, and that I was how I felt at the release party.

**Manon Demissy:**

Daphné was wearing this skin tight white minidress that looked oh so good on her. It was also heartening to see that she filled it out in the right places, and she really looked healthy again. I hadn’t even noticed it until then, but she was doing good, really good. I think we all were, strangely enough. 

She also had a leather jacket on, which I never saw her wear, but it looked so cool with her new hair, and her shoes were bright pink and sequined, which I felt was a nice— very Daphné— touch. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Manon was wearing a bright red off the shoulder crop top with a black blazer over it— the shoulder pads on that thing were massive, but what can we say, it was the eighties— and some mom jeans and white high top sneakers. She looked so cool. She had her red lipstick too, of course, and the fringe we’d cut somehow looked amazing given the fact that neither one of us had any hairstyling skills. I mean, more often than not we had people to do our hair and makeup, so maybe she got it recut and styled for the night, but she looked hot, is all I’m trying to say. She always did. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Daphné’s pale blonde hair wasn’t in its usual curls, she had it straightened but messy in an intentional sort of way. She had dark eyeliner under her eyes and some light glitter on her cheekbones but that was it, and she looked so incredible that I knew I couldn’t keep my feelings to myself much longer. I remember catching Lucas’ eye, because he walked in with her, and he looked at me like he knew, which was all the encouragement I needed.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Manon and I were kind of matching, on purpose. We both had blazers with massive shoulder pads because those were in style and we thought they looked cool, light wash jeans, and white high tops. I drew the line at the crop top, so I just wore a blue t-shirt.

Eliott had this brightly patterned short sleeved button down with these goldish brown pants that should not have looked good, but of course they did. His ankles were out, obviously, and he had his trusty Doc Martens on as well. His hair was fluffy and artfully styled as always, in a way that looked like he’d just drifted in on a cloud. He had an earring at that point too, and he wore a small hoop. 

Eliott’s earring made me feel things, I’ll leave it at that. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas looked so stunning. His blue shirt brought out the blue of his eyes, not that they needed it, and his hair was going in so many directions that it should have looked bad, but of course it looked amazing.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Alexia and I rolled in looking like every eighties stereotype in the book. Like, picture the most eighties outfits you can think of, and that was us. Everyone’s seen photos from that night by now, I don’t need to reiterate it for you. Noée couldn’t come, because she had some deadline for the magazine, so Alexia and I were each other’s dates for the night.

**Yann Cazas:**

I couldn’t stop smiling. Not only was our album already a hit, but Emma Borgès was my girlfriend. Yeah, it was still on the dl, until the next day, we’d decided, but I couldn’t contain my happiness. It was the happiest I’d ever been. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I was happy, I really was, about everything. Yann really was who I wanted to be with, even if I still harbored some hesitancy. Even though it was old, it was still new and exciting in a way, because now we kissed because we wanted to, and did things other than just sex. Though, the sex was still great. Better than usual, even. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I was so proud, all night. They’d now released three studio albums, each of them hitting an unprecedented level of success. The music video would be dropping at the release party, and there was already so much buzz surrounding it that my job was basically being done for me. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Somehow, everything was going right and everyone was happy at the same time for the first time I’d known everyone. It was an on top of the world feeling, and I thought it could only go up from there. I let myself daydream about their next album, what that might be and how much more there would be to celebrate. 

The tour was going to start roughly a month from the album release, and they were scheduled to tour until summer of ‘89, which was much longer than their first tour, almost two whole years. But we were all ready for it, and I had a feeling this tour journey would be one to remember. It was one to remember, all right.

**Manon Demissy:**

I pulled Daphné into the bathroom minutes before the video was supposed to drop, because I couldn’t let the night go on without being honest with her.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I was confused, and Manon looked terrified, so suddenly I got scared she’d figured out that I had feelings for her and the idea repulsed her, or something.

Instead, she said, “Daphné, I don’t think I know what love is, but even so, I think I might be in love with you.”

**Manon Demissy:**

She didn’t answer, just looked at me with those bright, beautiful, green eyes of hers. There were a million thoughts swimming in them, but I couldn’t read any of them, which scared me. I began to regret it all, but then she pulled me into her and kissed me so deeply that I understood everything she hadn’t said aloud. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I’d kissed a lot of girls in my life by then, but kissing Manon for the first time felt like the stars had finally aligned in my favor, like I’d found my soulmate. I’d always been a sucker for romance, and the thought that there was someone destined to fit into your life like a missing puzzle piece had always entranced me, I’d just long given up on it. 

But there was Manon, kissing me back, saying she was in love with me, and fitting into that last piece of the puzzle so perfectly that it made a picture so beautiful it was almost blinding.

**Manon Demissy:**

I knew, before she kissed me, but I  _ knew _ a little bit extra after she kissed me. It made me feel alive in a way I’d never felt before, and I wondered if this was the feeling Lucas told me about, the one he felt when he was with Eliott. If so, I was near ready to knock any bit of sense into him that I could, because how could he and Eliott have ever given up something that felt so right?

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I told her we should probably get out there for the music video premiere, even though it was the last thing on my mind. It seemed she was thinking similarly, because she said that they wouldn’t miss us, and proceeded to kiss me senseless up against the wall of the bathroom. It was messy and desperate and perfect.

**Manon Demissy:**

A music video was the least of my concerns.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott came to sit with me while we waited for the video to premiere. I’d been trying to find Daphné, and he’d been trying to find Manon, but they must have been in the bathroom or something.

Eliott was quieter than usual, a bit introspective, and he kept looking at me like he had something to say but couldn’t find the words.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I was thinking about how lucky I was to be there to experience this night. Things could have been very different, I could have not been there at all, but I was so glad I was.

I wanted to thank Lucas for being my anchor through everything, even if he wasn’t totally aware of it. I also figured I should tell him about the song title change before he heard it from somewhere else, but if I’m being honest, it wasn’t really at the forefront of my mind. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I finally asked him what was up, after a while, and he stared at me a moment longer, searching for words. I let myself look back at him, take him in for everything that he was. He started to say something, but got cut off, because the video was premiering, and afterward we both forgot he’d been about to say anything at all. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I was going to tell him that I was ready, for real. I’d come to terms with it for myself, that was why I’d changed the song title, and I was ready to tell him that it was our time. We’d waited long enough, and I couldn’t live the rest of my life waiting for the perfect time to love him. There was no perfect time, other than every minute of every day. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I was so proud of my work, not only on the song, but also on the video. Seeing ‘directed by Alexia Martineau’ up there on the screen made me grin from ear to ear, even though I’d also directed “Minute by Minute” and “I Think I’m In Love”, and those two had probably been more of a feat of direction. I wasn’t a part of the band, no, but I was still integral to their success, and they to mine. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I loved the video. It was the perfect mix of all of us, from goofy to serious to sad to happy and everywhere in between. Alexia had captured every emotion in such a formally informal way that would make fans feel like they knew us on a deeper level, even if they didn’t, really. 

**Basile Savary:**

The video made me tear up. It was so us. Alexia did an amazing job, as did the editor. 

**Yann Cazas:**

That song was perfect for that video on every level. The perfect mix of fun and angry and alternative and rock and complicated and simple lyricism. The perfect mix of all eight of us, and who we were. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I was filled with such an immense amount of appreciation for the band. They were my favorite people in the whole world, and you could see that so clearly in the video. Seven Minutes in Heaven was my family, it was all of our families.

**Manon Demissy:**

I was a bit preoccupied, but I saw the video a million times afterward. I really loved the informal quality it carried compared to our other videos. It wasn’t based on a narrative, but it still told a story. I thought Alexia had pulled it off beautifully.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Who cared about the video? Manon Demissy had told me she loved me. That was all that mattered to me that night. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

After the release party, things didn’t even begin to slow down in the slightest. The albums were flying off any and every shelf they were stocked on, and Shame was already trying to get Sofiane and I to negotiate for three more albums. We figured that was very likely to come to fruition, but we still decided to wait to meet about that until after the tour. We also had a wedding to plan, which we decided could also wait until after the tour. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Things were hectic in a brilliant way. This album was on track to be the best selling album of the year, maybe one of the best selling albums of all time. This was a success I never thought in a million years I’d be a part of, and for the most part none of us knew what to do with it. 

**Emma Borgès:**

Yann and I told everyone that we were dating, and I was surprised by how many people were surprised. Manon and Arthur already knew, and Lucas didn’t seem very surprised, or maybe he was good at hiding it, but everyone else looked flabbergasted.

**Basile Savary:**

I’d seen Emma with Alex at the Polaris shoot. The only reason I didn’t say anything was because that was obviously before Yann and Emma had gotten together. I had no idea they’d been fucking for nearly five years. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I would sit and stare at the record, most days, wondering how the hell we’d pulled it off. I had yet to listen to it on the whole, because I needed the perfect circumstances to do that, I needed to be completely alone, and I never seemed to be. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Daphné and I couldn’t keep our hands off each other, but we decided to keep our relationship to ourselves for a little while. We didn’t want Yann and Emma to think we were trying to outdo them or anything, and I, at least, understood why it was easier to keep things between two people for a little bit, especially when our relationship wasn’t one that was super commonly accepted at the time.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

We had a talk about what we were, and we decided to be girlfriends. We loved each other, why not put a label on it? 

I’d never had a girlfriend before, and I loved every second of it.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

The day finally came that I had the house to myself, so I sat down and blasted the record on full volume, listening to  _ everything _ . It was perfect, it really was. I’ve always been proud of my music, I really have, but  _ Polaris _ was the best thing I’ve ever done. Start to finish, it was a masterpiece. As the last song played, I turned the album over in my hands, looking at the silhouette art on the back along with the tracklist, and I noticed “Work”, wasn’t written there as “Work”.

It was called “Je T’aime”. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas called me and I couldn’t tell what emotions were running through his voice. He asked me to come over immediately, so I did. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I knew Eliott had been the one to change it. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew.

**Eliott Demaury:**

When I got there he shoved the album in my face and asked me why I’d changed it. I told him that he knew why, because I could see in his face that he did. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I needed to hear him say it out loud. I needed to know if I was being crazy for thinking what I was thinking.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I told him what I’d meant to say at the party, that I was ready, if he was.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Was I ready?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next time: track 8: the polaris tour - Fall 1987 to Summer 1989
> 
> your comments and such always make my day and i'm a hoe for validation, so please feel free to share ur thoughts :,)
> 
> album playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2eukKALCs6AZO1OHZDetHF?si=12BVMubuQ0igBOCcS4gwtA
> 
> find the original songs on my tumblr: @kieunora
> 
> hope everyone is safe and healthy ❤️


	8. Track 8: The Polaris Tour - Fall 1987 to Summer 1989

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the most fluff i've written for this fic so far i think, so i hope y'all enjoy ;))
> 
> tw: mentions of past sexual assault, internalized homophobia, mention of drug overdose, substance abuse

_ As the success of their latest album reached an all time high, Seven Minutes in Heaven got ready to head back out on the road for their third tour. They were one of the most famous groups in the world, and they weren’t human anymore, not to their fans, they were gods. Still, tensions lurked below the surface, threatening the peace and prosperity that had washed over the band in their greatest era yet. It was only a matter of when and how tensions would break their way out from under the water.  _

**Imane Bakhellal (manager, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

The opener for the  _ Polaris _ tour was some group called Clout From Grandma’s Closet, whatever that meant. They were an up and coming group, and Eliott had worked with one of the members in the past, so they seemed like they were going to be all right to travel with. We’d be getting a new opener once we went overseas, but Sofiane and I hadn't worked out the details of who that would be just yet, though we had plenty of time. 

**Sofiane Alaoui (manager, Eliott Demaury):**

I wish we would have interacted with CFGC more on the tour. All three of them were really great people, and their manager, Eve, was always very sweet and funny with Imane and I. The tour definitely boosted their status too, they released their first album afterwards to massive success.

**Yann Cazas (bassist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

Emma and I talked about what we would do when we got back from tour, as far as living situations went. It seemed silly for any of us to be living in those dingy little apartments we’d moved into seven years ago but I felt so emotionally attached to the space it was hard to even think about leaving. But Emma and I wanted our own space, and we figured Arthur would want to move out too, so we kept our options open.

**Emma Borgès (keyboardist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

The only reason moving in with Yann didn’t seem daunting was because we’d basically been living together for seven years anyway, even if it was just as friends or friends with an occasional dive into a not so friendly territory. I wasn’t really going to think about it for a while, because tour was all that was on my mind, but I wasn’t as scared about the prospect as I thought I’d be. 

**Basile Savary (rhythm guitarist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

It looked like Maria and I were in for a long engagement. It was fine, we both knew how much we loved each other, and that we were going to spend our lives together, but I still wanted to marry her sooner than 1990, which looked like the most realistic time for a wedding. I also didn’t want to leave all the planning up to her and I wished I could take her on tour with us, but she had a job and a life to attend to at home, so we settled on calling each other as often as possible.

**Arthur Broussard (drummer, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

This would be the first time I’d performed live since losing my hearing, and even though I knew all the songs like the back of my hand, and I’d performed in the studio multiple times, I was still nervous. I didn’t want to be the weak link or to let the group down. It also sucked that Alexia wouldn’t be coming with us, since she had a new project to produce and wasn’t technically a part of the band. She said she’d come to as many shows as humanly possible, but I’d still miss her, and Noée, for that matter. 

**Daphné Lecomte (background vocalist and percussionist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

The tour couldn’t come fast enough. I was, weirdly, at a point in my life that I had almost everything I’d ever wanted. I had a flourishing career, more money than I knew what to do with, a makeshift family that I loved to pieces, and Manon Demissy, my girlfriend, my love.

**Manon Demissy (lead guitarist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I couldn’t believe my luck, I really couldn’t. I’d reached out to my dad, too, for the first time in a while, and caught up with him. He was doing good, I was glad to hear, and he was happy that I was doing good too. I didn’t go into all the details of everything that had happened to me in the past few years, because I didn’t want to dwell on it, but I apologized for being so distant and promised it wouldn’t happen again. He asked how Lucas was doing too, and well, I guess that’s up to Lucas to say.

**Lucas Lallemant (lead singer, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I was in love with Eliott Demaury, and he was in love with me, so was I ready to be with him, for real? Of course I was. Of course.

**Eliott Demaury (singer,** **_Le Premier_ ** **and** **_Polaris_ ** **):**

It was such a different way to go into this next tour, especially as compared to the last one, but I was ready for it. I was ready to sing love songs on stage to the person they were about and go home— or to a hotel, or bus— and kiss him into bed every single night.

He told me that he didn’t want any miscommunication about it: we were boyfriends now. And I wholeheartedly agreed. We’d let everyone know soon enough, but it was best kept between the two of us for just a little while, we decided. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

We were split amongst two busses this time, because one had been a little crowded during the MXM tour. Bus one was Yann, Emma, Arthur, and Basile, and bus two was Manon, Daphné, Eliott, and Lucas. Sofiane and I traded off which one we stayed with.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Lucas and I nicknamed them the gay bus and the straight bus. He was the only one who knew about Manon and I, because she’d told him some things and we were awful at hiding other things. In return, we knew about him and Eliott, because it was equally obvious.

**Manon Demissy:**

I argued against them calling the busses that, because for all anyone knew, I was straight too, but they thought it was funny.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Let’s just say the bus situation worked out very well in our favor. If it was the MXM tour I probably would have set the bus on fire before being stuck with Eliott and Manon for an extended time, but things changed as people grew. I think we’d all grown a lot during the course of  _ Polaris _ . I felt like a real adult for the first time in my life.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I was looking forward to bonding more with Baz during the tour, it had been too long since it had been the two of us against the world. 

**Basile Savary:**

I’d lost a lot of the foundation of my relationship with Arthur, and I knew I was also to blame for it, but since Yann and Emma would likely have their own thing going on, I decided to take this opportunity to get back to a place where we were like brothers to each other. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I would have liked to have been with Lucas, we’d lost a bit of our closeness in the time he’d gotten closer to Daphné, but I knew there was something between them that I would just never understand, not because I didn’t want to, but because I couldn’t. Lucas was happy, though, and I could tell it wasn’t a fake kind of happy, so I was happy about that.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I was giddy. It was my first real headline tour, because technically I’d only been the opener for the last one. And this time, I was with Lucas. I could do anything with him by my side, I really could.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

We fell back into dating the way you fall asleep. It didn’t seem wholly different to how we’d been after Eliott’s divorce from Lucille, there was just some added intimacy. I could look at him whenever I wanted without feeling guilty, we could fall asleep in the same bed and wake up in each other’s arms. It felt like magic, to me. I still had some trouble sleeping, Eliott didn’t magically fix everything wrong with me, but I felt less anxious knowing he was there, watching him breathe in and out steadily. 

**Manon Demissy:**

We started the tour in LA with three shows. Our setlist was longer than it had been on our last two tours, but people still seemed to want more. We played “People As They Are” as our encore every night, and that one brought the roof down nearly every time. 

**Emma Borgès:**

We opened the shows with “I Think I’m In Love” and closed them— during the encore— with “People As They Are”, which I think was the perfect way to bring the album full circle. “Minute by Minute” was our ‘last song’, because we’d been debating which song to use as the end of the concert and which to use as the encore, but we decided “People As They Are” was the kind of song you went out with a bang to, leaving everyone hopefully having one of the best nights of their lives. 

**Alexia Martineau (producer,** **_Fifteen Minutes of Fame_ ** **,** **_Le Premier_ ** **,** **_Minute by Minute_ ** **, and** **_Polaris_ ** **):**

It was wild to see how far they’d come. Yes, I’d worked with them the whole time, so I should have been able to pick up on it sooner, but hearing them perform a song like “Under the Sun” in the same show as “The Boy Who Was Afraid of the Dark”… they were just on an entirely different level. Their old songs were still great, but it was easy for me, especially, to see just how much they’d grown. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I kind of forgot that everyone thought Daphné and I were dating until it became blatantly obvious by the way the fans responded to us interacting. Like, usually Eliott took backing vocals for “Infiltration”, but the first time I did instead of him, everyone went absolutely buckwild, like they were waiting for us to kiss or something. I probably would have, as a joke, if I hadn’t known it would only add fuel to the fire. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Charles came to one of our LA shows, because he was the studio head, so he felt the need or whatever. Honestly, he was probably trying to either get under Manon’s skin, or get her back, but we held all the power now. There was no way he was even getting close to her. Nevertheless, Emma and I decided to debut “Susie Save Your Love” during the show he was at. Manon hadn’t heard it yet either, and I hoped she wouldn’t be too mad. I’d originally wanted her to sing it with me, but I’d assumed the situation was still a bit too raw. 

I’m not sure if Charles got it, but I hoped he did. He deserved to feel like shit. 

**Charles Munier (studio head, Shame Records):**

Nico didn’t even rape her. They wanted to ‘protect’ each other like they were family? Fine. But he was  _ my _ family. I’d thought Manon was a part of that too, but clearly her brother and the others continued to exert their manipulation over her. So what if they had a little power over me, I was still the boss. I couldn’t do anything to them, and quite honestly I didn’t want to, because they were good for business, but I  _ could _ bring in a million new artists and hope that one of them would take them down a peg, show them they weren’t all that. 

Daphné Lecomte seemed particularly vindictive, but I suppose she was always kind of a bitch like that. Her platinum blonde hair looked awful, too, she really wasn’t pretty enough to fit in with girls like Manon, but she’d somehow deluded herself into thinking so. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Charles Munier was  _ nothing _ dressed up in a fancy suit. That’s it.

**Emma Borgès:**

I’d never sang on stage before, especially not with a co-lead vocal, but Daphné wanted to sing the song, and I understood why, so I agreed to it.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I knew about Daphné and Emma’s song because they needed drums, so I was happy to oblige and perform it live for the first time.

**Basile Savary:**

“Susie Save Your Love” came out of nowhere. I didn’t even know Emma could sing like that. I mean, no one could really top Lucas, Eliott, and Daphné, but Emma had been holding out on us! She was really incredible!

**Manon Demissy:**

I— I didn’t know what to make of the song. Or maybe I did, and that was the problem I was having. Daphné always meant well, at least when it came to me, but I’m not sure she considered how that song would make me feel. It brought me right back to being broken, all but lying at Charles’ feet like the pleasant little housewife he wanted me to be. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I was just trying to show Manon how much I cared about her, how I wished I’d been able to be there in the way I was now sooner. 

**Emma Borgès:**

The audience went wild when I started singing. I hadn’t been expecting that at all, and I kind of loved it.

**Yann Cazas:**

I was more in love with Emma than I’d ever been. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Manon was a bit subdued on stage after that number, and I didn’t entirely know why. Daphné was having the night of her life, she was unstoppable, but I worried Manon was a bit mad at her. Selfishly, I hoped they’d solve it quickly, because it would be our first night on the bus and I wanted to cuddle with Eliott without worrying about those two arguing.

**Manon Demissy:**

I didn’t mean for it to become an argument.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I didn’t understand why Manon was mad about it. At its heart, the song was about me loving her, not about her and Charles. I wanted her to see that part of it.

**Manon Demissy:**

I couldn’t stop seeing Charles in the audience, and then hearing the song about me, him,  _ us _ — it was just too much all at once. I should have told Daph that, but instead I just shut her out.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I’m a Taurus, I’m stubborn. I didn’t want to let it go, but Manon clearly didn’t want to talk, so I didn’t know where to go from there.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Daphy and I spent the first night on the bus in her bunk working through how to solve her conflict with Manon. Instead of me spending it spooning Eliott. I’m not mad about it at all.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I was with Manon, because Lucas was with Daphné. It was weird, I was super close with Lucas, obviously, and Manon, but Daphné and I weren’t on the same level. Lucas was close with all of us in different but no less meaningful ways. I secretly always thought it was because Daphné harbored resentment towards me for coming in and taking her role in the band, in some ways. As far as I was concerned, she was still far more integral than I was, but then again, I was on the album cover, and she wasn’t.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I didn’t have any issues with Eliott that he could control. It wasn’t his fault that he was who he was, and that he’d always have people kissing his ass and begging to suck his dick.

**Manon Demissy:**

I sort of avoided talking to Daphné for a couple shows, which wasn’t fair to her, but as stubborn as she was, I was too. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

There was irony in that Lucas and I had finally gotten together for real and now we were being pulled every which way in an argument between two of our closest friends. It’s ok, though, I still snuck in plenty of time to kiss him.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Kisses from Eliott were always the best part of my day. He’d wake me up with soft kisses on my forehead, kiss my knuckles absently as he gazed out the window while we drove through states and cities galore. He liked watching the scenery, I liked watching him. 

Living on a bus was strange, though I’d done it twice before. It felt a whole lot less crowded, having all of us split into two busses, but sometimes it felt lonely too. I missed Yann the most of everyone on the other bus, because I’d been missing Yann a lot lately in general. I knew that he had his thing with Emma, but he didn’t know that I knew that it wasn’t new. I was also with Eliott, but that wasn’t all I needed. I was grateful to have Manon and Daphné whenever I wanted them, but Yann, Arthur, Emma, and Basile were still a very important part of my life, and I worried that they didn’t know it.

**Basile Savary:**

I wasn’t sure how the other four were doing on their bus, and a lot of days I missed us all travelling together, but we were all having a blast on our bus. Emma and Yann were all over each other all the time, but not in an annoying way. Arthur and I spent a lot of time smoking weed and fucking around because it was the first time in a long time it had been just the two of us. I still called Maria whenever I could, but as long as I was happy, she was happy, and vice versa.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Tour was going fucking incredibly. Some things were hard, and the loud noises affected me more than they ever had, they made my head hurt horribly sometimes, but in those cases I either turned down my hearing aids or took them out. It was a gamble, taking them out, but I knew each song so well, and I could get a sense of the vibrations on stage without hearing the noises the way I used to. 

We also had our interpreters at each concert, signing the songs for the audience members in the deaf or hard of hearing communities. I was proud that we were able to do that, it meant a lot to me. I was getting pretty good at signing too. It still didn’t come to me as naturally as speaking, but I got better with each and every day, and I tried to have conversations in sign language with the interpreters whenever I could. 

Baz, Emma, and Yann even wanted to learn, so I tried to teach them a few things when I could, but I wasn’t the best teacher since I wasn’t totally confident in it myself. I hoped Alexia and Noée would be able to visit soon and help out with it all. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I was sick of Manon not talking to me, but I didn’t want to apologize, so that left me at a standstill. Lucas told me to just talk to her, but I just said that was rich coming from him, so he stopped trying to advise me. 

In the end, I took his advice, though, because being with Manon was better than being without. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I tried to explain why I’d reacted the way I did. It wasn’t that the wound was still too fresh, I just hated the idea of being protected, because it made me feel weak, even though care, protection, and love aren’t really signs of weakness. It also took me back to that time, and it wasn’t that I couldn’t learn and grow from it, because I had, I was just so ashamed to have ended up in that situation in the first place. If I’d listened to what literally everyone else in my life was saying about him, all the bad and worse things that had happened wouldn’t have happened. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Manon always had a problem with blaming herself for things that weren’t her fault. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

When Manon and I would talk about it, she always blamed herself, which I thought was such bullshit, even if I’d felt similarly myself, with Lucille. I brought that up to her, I asked if I was to blame for the way our relationship had turned out, for the manipulation that had occurred. She always said of course not, even though in my head I probably was more to blame in that situation than she was with Charles, and I tried to get her to see that. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott and Manon were alike in a lot of ways. One of the most annoying ways was their almost martyr-like attitudes, where they always had to be in the wrong for everything, even when there was no reason for them to be. Manon had never asked for what happened to her to happen, and just because Eliott had experienced a deep, dark, depressive spiral, it didn’t mean he had done it to himself. They could be imperfect without being the problem. I’d learned that for myself the hard way, so had Daphné. And I think the two of us were a hell of a lot more imperfect than Manon and Eliott.

**Manon Demissy:**

I felt like I deserved to be hurt, for falling into that trap, and where I became so stubborn was when Daphné tried to tell me differently. It’s a bit hypocritical of me, I know, because if our situations were reversed I never would have sat there and let Daphné blame herself. 

Thinking about it that way was what got me to listen to her, really.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

It’s hard to accept love when you’ve been taught that you don’t deserve it, but Manon deserved it all, she really did.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

For the most part, Eliott and I were just chilling. I felt like, oddly, we were the most blasé of the group for the time being. No one was causing problems per se, and part of me wondered if that was because Eliott and I weren’t caught in some weird limbo with one another. 

We took to having full conversations in French when everyone was around, just to have more time to ourselves.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Lucas and Eliott were being weird again, but not bad weird. It was sort of like when they’d worked on “Minute by Minute” together. Everything was so good for the two of them that nothing else mattered outside of their own little bubble. It annoyed the hell out of me. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Arthur was always annoyed when Lucas and Eliott were around, but I didn’t know why. They were getting along, and that's all I wanted from them. Things were so much better for everyone when they were getting along.

A part of me wondered if it went beyond just ‘getting along’ but it wasn’t any of my business, so I didn’t ask. Lucas would tell me when and if he wanted to. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

It was so fun to travel again. I’d missed it more than I realized. We were going to colder places as the weather got colder, and while I loved the Los Angeles sun, it was exciting to me. I was the only one of them who hadn’t grown up in the upper midwest, I’d only seen snow a handful of times, so each time was like entering a new world. 

We had a few shows scheduled in Minnesota, because that was where they were from, and we planned it so they’d have an extra night to visit their families if they wanted to. I had nowhere to visit, so I assumed I’d crash with Sofiane and Imane or something, but Lucas invited me home with himself and Manon and Daphné. I didn’t ask why Daphné didn’t go to visit her family. She never really talked about them, but I knew they didn’t have a great relationship. Funny how that was a common thing amongst most of us. 

I was surprised Lucas was going to visit Richard, actually, I knew he’d never really considered him family, not in the way his mom was. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I don’t know, I guess I felt like I owed it to him. I hadn’t spoken to him in a really long time, but Manon said he always asked about me, wanted to know how I was doing. Seeing my biological father, on the last tour, had really driven home for me that, differences aside, Richard  _ was _ my father, in most of the ways that counted. It didn’t mean I had to like him, necessarily, but I could accept his role in my life. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I’d met Richard before, obviously, but I’d always felt more of a connection to Celine. She was quite the woman, the only reason I’d decided to give Lucas a chance, actually. Someone who was raised by her couldn’t have been as annoying and self centered as I’d originally thought him to be. Though, I guess I’m a bit annoying and self centered too, so I’m not one to talk.

**Yann Cazas:**

It had been far too long since I’d visited home. The last time was during the hiatus between tour two and album three, and I’d mostly just slept off my exhaustion the whole time. My family had been really great throughout this whirlwind journey of my life, though. My sister liked to bounce back and forth between pretending she had no idea who I was and touting the fact that we were related to anyone who would listen. I expected nothing less, and I only loved her more for it. 

My parents mostly just thought I needed more sleep and less nights out. That was probably true, but I wasn’t partying like I used to much anyway. That makes me sound so old, I was twenty five for god’s sake. To be clear: I was a world famous rockstar, of course I fucking partied. It was just a little bit harder with my loss of anonymity to party in the same way I had during the Fifteen Minutes tour. 

I was fine staying away from the parties to spend time with my family, though. Before we got to Minnesota, Lucas joked that we’d missed our five year high school reunion, and I think all of us almost pissed ourselves laughing but Eliott. I forgot he had the education level of a fourteen year old. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Just because I didn’t understand the classic high school experience, it didn’t mean I wasn’t decently well educated. I was the only one who, technically, went to college. Those random classes I took counted for something.

They were all seven years out of high school, though, and I was technically nine, if I would have gone. That freaked me out a little bit, not going to lie. I was twenty seven, I couldn’t even pretend to be a young adult anymore. I knew thirty wasn’t a big deal, and that plenty of musicians kept their careers well into their older years, but it still felt weird. Would I really be singing songs I’d written when I was twenty two my whole life? Even if that life was almost entirely unrecognizable from what it had been before?

**Basile Savary:**

Arthur came home with me. My parents knew him, obviously, from high school. Maria met up with us in Minnesota because my family wanted to spend more time with her too, and I thought that this would be the perfect time for it. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

It was really nice to see Baz’s family, and Maria too. I didn’t harbor any resentment towards her for ‘stealing him away’ or anything, because you can’t steal people away from other people, they don’t belong to anyone. I’d always been a bit worried about occupying less space in his heart as he made more for her, but if there was anything that I’d learned about Baz, it was that he had enough space to love everyone in the world an equally great amount. 

I knew I wasn’t going to see my family anyway, so it just felt good to be welcome somewhere. 

**Emma Borgès:**

While I was home, my mom introduced me to her new boyfriend, and it was Arthur’s dad. I never told him about it, but I was a little shaken by it. Not because my mom had a boyfriend, or even because Arthur’s parents had split up, but because Arthur knew nothing about this, and his dad didn’t even know enough to recognize me or the band I was a part of. 

I stayed with Yann for the rest of the time I was home. I felt bad about it, but his family was very welcoming, and they were ecstatic to hear that we were dating. 

**Manon Demissy:**

My dad was softer than he’d been growing up. He hadn’t gone looking for love after Celine’s passing, but I didn’t think he was lonely. I think he’d finally gotten to the acceptance stage, both with my mother’s death and Celine’s, which was all I’d ever wanted for him. It was nice to see him smile and joke and care for me like he did when I was a little girl. The Richard Demissy Lucas knew wasn’t the one I’d grown up with, which was why there was always some contention there, I think, but I hoped this visit would change his mind.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I won’t lie, it felt weird being a part of a family I wasn’t technically a part of in any way shape or form. My connection to them was gone, they owed nothing to me. Obviously, with me and Manon, it was a bit different, but Richard could have said fuck it and never spoken to me again, like I intended to do with him. I was used to people leaving, I would never have expected him to stay. But he did. And I let him.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas was strangely melancholy the entire time we were in his hometown, even on stage. He sang “Mon Cœur”, the first time I’d ever heard him do it live. The first time most people had. He said it was because he’d performed it for the first time there in Minnesota, at his senior prom, but I think it was because he felt like he was home, in a nostalgic way. And maybe he felt like his mom was with him too. I was sure she was. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Lucas performing “Mon Cœur”… it hit me in this visceral way. I started crying on stage, and though I don’t think anyone noticed, it was a deeply personal moment for me. Because it reminded me of Celine, and because it reminded me of how far we’d come. Four outcasts in a basement performing Beatles covers because we felt music in our bones.

I convinced Lucas to perform “House of the Rising Sun” with me at our last show in Minnesota, for old time’s sake, and to my surprise, he didn’t take long to convince.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I’ve always been a sucker for full circle moments, I’ll admit it. There was no way I could pass that one up.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I didn’t know what the deal with that song was, but they performed it beautifully.

**Manon Demissy:**

I told my dad that I was dating Daphné after that concert. I knew that he may very well have a problem with it, I’d heard some of the things he’d said to Lucas or about other people over the years, but I was filled with so much love that all I wanted was to share it with the people I loved. Daphné okayed it, of course, and she said she’d be by my side if things went poorly.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Richard barely even flinched, just told Manon how happy he was that she was happy, and that Daphné was welcome at his place anytime, she was family now. I shouldn’t have been angry, but I was. He’d called me names, instilled a fear so deep inside me that I repressed most of my feelings until I was  _ twenty _ . But now, Manon said she was dating a girl, and it was fucking rainbow happy land. I didn’t know what to do with myself, and looking back this was not the best reaction, but I stormed out of the house, got in the car and drove until I found what I was looking for. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Obviously Lucas wasn’t homophobic, and we assured Richard of that when he looked upset, but none of us could figured out why he was so mad. Manon might have had some inkling, but she didn’t say anything. Eliott just said he’d go find him, and we left it at that.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I found him, eventually, but he was in a very uneasy state. I didn’t know what, exactly, he’d decided to partake in, but he wasn’t just drunk, that was for sure.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It was stupid. I’d been clean, or whatever, for five-ish years. I’d probably had a problem, though it’s hard to look at it as one when I can’t remember a lot of what happened in that time anyway. I suppose that doesn’t help my case. Stopping it, though, hard as it was at times, really hadn’t bothered me much. I found new ways to cope, lots of them weren’t very healthy, to be honest, but I hadn’t jumped back into the worst of my habits, even been tempted to, in a very long time. 

Manon coming out with Daphné, and then Richard accepting her without question shouldn’t have set me off, but it did, for some reason, and I couldn’t handle it. I was lucky not to be recognized. That sort of thing never happened anywhere anymore.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I don’t even think that he knew it was me. I’m not sure he even knew where he was, but he’d somehow made it to the cemetery his mom was buried in. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I really don’t know how I ended up at the cemetery. I was missing her, I guess, as per usual, and that must have been the only place I could think to go. I don’t even remember that night after I got the drugs I wanted.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I’d never been on this side of it, and I was terrified. I didn’t know what he’d taken, or how much of it he’d taken. He was singing when I found him, in French. It wasn’t a song that I knew, maybe it wasn’t a song at all. I loved to hear him sing, anywhere anytime, except, perhaps, nearing midnight in the middle of a cemetery. The last thing I needed was for him to get arrested. 

**Manon Demissy:**

My dad was in bed by the time Eliott got home with Lucas, and I was glad we’d convinced him to do so. I couldn’t imagine what he would have thought with Lucas coming home in that state. Eliott was clearly freaked out, but he didn’t want us to call Imane because he didn’t want Lucas to get in trouble. That was the least of my worries, but I obliged his request, just worried about my brother making it to morning. He didn’t seem entirely out of it in a way that required a hospital, but I knew that he could overdo things a little extra without even realizing until he was in too deep.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Nothing about Lucas’ behavior made any sense to me, but it wasn’t my place to interject when Manon and Eliott were out of their mind with worry, I just had to be there for them.

**Eliott Demaury:**

He got a little bit more lucid around two in the morning, then he started throwing up. He had his head in the toilet for about three hours, falling asleep with his head on the toilet seat every twenty minutes or so. 

My first thought was that he was going to feel like shit in the morning, and my second thought was  _ good _ , which was a bit spiteful and hypocritical of me, but I never wanted this to happen again. I also decided that I’d call Idriss in the morning and apologize properly for all the shit I’d put him through with my substance use and abuse over the years.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

The seventies and eighties were all about sex, drugs, and rock and roll, sure, but if I have to hear one more fucking person romaticize any of it— well, you don’t even want to get me started. I know better because I was a part of all of it and let me tell you, it’s not some beautiful or badass aesthetic to aspire to or wish you were a part of, it sucks. It’s lonely and terrible and I got out of it before I could fall completely, but I got really close, and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. Some people I cared about more than myself got even closer, and that’s a feeling I never want anyone to feel. Ever. 

The good outweighed the bad, for the most part, because at the heart of it all was the music, and the music was why I did any of it in the first place, but the sex and the drugs…

_ (Lucas shakes his head) _

Just, for the love of god, don’t be like me. It’s not romantic, it’s debilitating. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Everyone seemed so fucking tense when we left Minnesota. I understood Emma feeling uneasy, as well as Arthur, because he was sure to feel some sort of pain even if Emma hadn’t told him what was eating her up inside. Basile was happy as a clam, but we’d grown to expect that from him.

The other bus was a different story. They all looked like they hadn’t slept, Lucas looked a little bit like he’d died, Manon wouldn’t talk to anyone, Daphné seemed like she was trying so hard to keep it together that she was about to lose her mind, and Eliott was so somber I thought maybe someone  _ had _ died.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

They all refused to tell me what was going on and it was infuriating. I couldn’t help if I didn’t know what was wrong.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I laid with Lucas in his bed on the bus— they were those small sort of bunk beds— and I just held him in my arms. He wasn’t completely back to normal yet, and I was a little worried he’d start puking again, but after a while he just started to cry softly, so softly. I wanted to protect him from the world, but it was hard to do when I didn’t know what, exactly, had hurt him.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott loved me with a heart so big it took up all the space in a room. It was hard for me sometimes to feel like I deserved it, when most of the love I’d received in my life I’d never felt quite as strongly. That’s not to say they loved me any less or more than Eliott, I’m just telling you how it felt. Like, I felt Manon’s love for me less than Eliott’s, or even Daphné’s, sometimes, because I took it for granted. I’m sure she felt the same about me.

**Manon Demissy:**

I felt like I’d done something wrong, but I was so mad at him that I didn’t even want to get to the bottom of it. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I understood why Manon was mad, even if I understood that Lucas wasn’t thinking about Manon or anyone when he did what he did, and that he hadn’t been trying to hurt anyone but himself. I’d seen it with my mom many times before, and yeah, I resented her for it, but I knew Lucas wasn’t like my mom. That’s why I cared so much.

**Eliott Demaury:**

We performed another show that night, in Wisconsin, and I could tell Lucas was a little off, but no one else could. Lucas’ off night was someone else’s perfect night. I worried we weren’t going to talk about it, but he said that he’d talk to me on the bus later, that Sofiane and Imane were staying on the other bus so we’d have the bedroom to ourselves instead of the bunks. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I hate talking things through. My go to solution is to ignore it until it hopefully goes away, but obviously that’s not healthy or helpful to anyone. So I decided to buck up and talk about it, because I knew I’d scared everyone and I didn’t want them to be scared. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas explained to me why he’d been hit so deeply by what had happened with Manon and Richard, and I understood. It didn’t make it ok, but I understood. I can’t imagine how I would have felt in his situation, or what I would have done, so it seemed silly for  _ me _ to be mad at him in any way. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It didn’t help, it didn’t make any of it go away. I don’t really remember anything, as I said, but I know that it only made me feel worse. I think it was good for me to have that feeling, though, because that’s a big part of the reason I stayed away from all that going forward. I’d feel like shit sometimes, sure, but drinking or doing hard drugs wasn’t going to help anything, it was only going to hurt more. I’d done it enough to know. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I didn’t want to impose on him, or make him feel like I was making his problem my problem, but I did want him to know that I understood. And that I’d be there for him in any way I could. 

I also told him to talk to Manon, but I knew he’d take his time with that. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Being vulnerable and open with people has never been my strong suit and, honestly, more often than not I left conversations wanting to drown my feelings in whatever I could find. This situation was different, though. As uncomfortable as it made me, I really did want to make sure I grew from this and stayed away from old habits as long as I possibly could. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I waited for him to come to me. Not only because I was still mad, but because I knew from experience that pushing him was never going to work the way I wanted it to.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I was never really one for the tough love approach, but I wanted to say something, for both my sake and Manon’s, so I told him about my mom, and how that had affected me and our relationship. We weren’t close when he’d been dealing with a real problem, during the Fifteen Minutes tour, so I’d never really concerned myself with his habits, but he was one of the people I was closest to in the world now, so I felt I owed it to both of us to say something. I didn’t want our relationship to fall apart, but I couldn’t do that again.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I felt a bit strange about the fact that there was this whole other part to Daphné’s life I’d just never known. I heard her loud and clear, though, and I knew my assurances meant nothing, but I tried to explain to her just how much I was trying to move on from that part of my life. I’d done really good for a really long time, and I only wish I’d been strong enough to hold out longer.

It was probably for the best that it happened then, though, not later, because I was at the perfect point in my life to really evaluate this coping mechanism as something detrimental. I’ve been clean in every way since then, for what it's worth. I’ve come close to slipping up many times, but I always pull through with the strength I gained and continue to grow on from that time in my life. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Lucas was entirely back on track after that one incident, but I wasn’t going to forgive and forget so easily. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I talked to Manon after about a week. She knew that Richard and I had a different relationship than she had with him, which only made sense, it had been the same with my mother, so I tried my best to explain how that factored into my reaction. It all sounded so stupid coming out of my mouth, me being mad at her for coming out to him, but I hoped she understood it was more than that. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I did understand what he was saying, why he’d felt the way he had. I kicked myself for not drawing the conclusion earlier, but I was glad that he told me. I told him that, whenever he was ready, I’d be right by his side if he came out to my dad. And if my dad had anything to say about it, I’d gotten pretty good at standing up for myself and the people I cared about. I didn’t think he would, I think that he’d grown a lot since we knew him as kids, but I’d still fight if I needed to.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Manon and I wrote a song after that conversation called “Ribs”, which sort of just talked about our childhood, and becoming real functioning adults, and what the hell that even meant. It was scary, and it was an intimate feeling too, when shared with others. The seven of us— discluding Eliott— had grown up into adults somewhere along the way, and I didn’t quite know what to think about that.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

That song had such a personal feeling to it, to each of us. And to everyone who listened to it, I think. I’m actually really upset we never had a chance to release that song on an album together, because it was something special. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I was excited that we’d gotten to the point during the tour that we started writing and creating again. Somehow it was more fun when we were on the road, maybe because there was no expectation for the new music, other than to surprise audiences in, hopefully, a good way. 

**Basile Savary:**

I was feeling a bit melancholy, if I’m being honest. I knew that they needed me there, and for the most part I wanted to be there, but I wondered how much longer I’d want to be there. The music was fun and all, but there were so many aspects of life in LA that I missed, and I sort of had this growing feeling of disillusionment with the rockstar life.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Every time I went on stage I felt like I was becoming myself more and more, bit by bit. It was still hard, sometimes, with my hearing aids, and I probably made the most mistakes onstage because I’d taken to leaving my aids behind on stage for my own sake, but no one noticed. And I experienced it all in a new way. 

Self discovery could be a double edged sword, though, because sometimes realizing things about yourself could lead to inner turmoil on a variety of levels. I’d talked a lot with Alexia, Noée, Camille, and Mika about sexuality, because it was obviously something they’d all considered in their lives, and before tour I sort of came to terms with the fact that I was bisexual. Nothing in particular triggered it, but it felt right.

That wasn’t where the inner turmoil came in, though, it was more about the leanings of my heart, who it was leaning towards in particular.

_ (Arthur sighs) _

Lucas fucking Lallemant. Is anyone surprised? I think I’d been half in love with him since he first approached me after band practice in high school.

He and Eliott were thick as thieves, but they had been for a while, so I never knew what to make of it. I didn’t think they were together, but I wasn’t ever sure of it. I tried to push most of my feelings down anyway, because I didn’t want to deal with the messiness of relationships within the band. I’d leave that up to Emma and Yann for the time being. 

**Emma Borgès:**

Arthur seemed a bit dazed sometimes, like he had a lot of thoughts on his mind. I told him I’d always be there to help him sort through them, if he wanted, and left it at that. You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t force it to drink, you know? 

**Basile Savary:**

I talked to Arthur a lot, he was the only one I talked to, actually, about the feelings I was having. He didn’t always seem super present in the conversations, but he also didn’t seem to understand what I was saying. He just thought that tour was tiring for me, which it was, because it was a lot of work, but that wasn’t what I’d meant. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

It sounds bad, but I think both busses were oblivious to the things going on with the people on the bus opposite them. No one knew the four of us on our bus were in relationships, and none of us knew shit about the inner workings of the other four’s minds and relationships with one another.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott and I were cranking out new music like nobody’s business, now that there wasn’t the pressure of a perfect album resting on our shoulders. We could experiment a bit, and show our love for one another a bit more. I didn’t tell him about the Sunflower Diaries, but “Sunflower Vol. 6” did make an appearance on tour. He always asked where the name came from, but I always refused to tell him, saying a magician never revealed his secrets. 

**Manon Demissy:**

It was hard for me to hide how in love with Daph I was on stage sometimes, but we had nothing on Lucas and Eliott, as per usual. They still sang some of the songs in the heartbreak hat trick, but they didn’t feel like heartbreak songs anymore. Don’t even get me started on “I Wanna Be Yours”. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

“I Wanna Be Yours” was… sexier than I intended it to be. Technically I knew that Eliott  _ was _ mine, but hey, the sentiment remained, ok. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

When we performed the new songs, I had no idea what the lyrics were saying most of the time, so I observed other things. Like the way certain people looked at each other or interacted when they sang.

I felt like my window was closing, that if I wanted to tell Lucas how I felt, I would have to do it soon, because Eliott was clearly into him again. I wasn’t privy to all the details of their relationship, and I didn’t know why they always came back to each other. Lucas hadn’t had any great loves after Eliott, sure, but Eliott had Lucille and probably anyone else he would ever have wanted. Why did it have to be Lucas?

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Yann and Emma’s relationship was being eaten up by the press, and it sort of hit me one day while reading a magazine with their faces on it that I was done living half a life. I wouldn’t force Manon to do anything, but I was coming out. I didn’t care what Imane would have to say and I didn’t care that it would break fantasies of Lucas and I being together forever. We were at the height of our fame, I wanted to be  _ me _ during it all. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I knew there was no stopping her, so I didn’t even try. Was it the best move, business wise? Probably not, but Daphné was a human being, not a number on a spreadsheet. I owed it to her to give her this thing she’d been dying to say for years. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I decided to come out with her. I didn’t want her to have to face that alone, and I didn’t want us to have to hide our love any longer. We told the bandmates who didn’t know first, of course. I also talked to Lucas about me coming out, because I didn’t want to take any sort of moment away from him either, but he said he still wasn’t ready, and I respected that. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It wasn’t even that I wasn’t ready. I’d truly been ready for a long time, and I’d come very close to just ripping off the bandaid a few of those times, but after everything with Chloé, and seeing Eliott and Lucille’s highly publicized relationship, I knew that wasn’t what I wanted. And, like it or not, if I came out, that would only get worse. I wanted some sense of privacy, so if people thought I was straight, there was no way they’d link Eliott and I like that.

I wasn’t totally off the hook, of course, because some of my songs were a bit more forthcoming than others, especially in how they were performed. I really couldn’t help how I acted with Eliott onstage, it was so intoxicating to live it that I nearly blacked out most of the time anyway. 

I’d heard the rumors, of course I had. Our “People As They Are” video had raised some speculations on the matter, because Eliott and I looked far closer than friends even though that’s all we were at the time, but if I said nothing, it all went away eventually. Heteronormativity did wonders for my straight guy image. 

I should have been braver, but at that point in my life, my privacy meant more to me than honesty with the world. It was selfish, but I truly think it was necessary for me. 

**Basile Savary:**

So Manon and Daphné were together. I can’t say I didn’t see it coming, but I was still pleasantly surprised. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I’d made a bet with Emma. She bet me that Manon and Daphné were together, I’d bet her that Lucas and Eliott were together. She won that round. 

**Emma Borgès:**

It didn’t hurt that I had some insider info. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I sort of wondered what the hell they were getting up to on that other bus, even if the dynamic between the four of them confused the hell out of me sometimes. I was happy for Manon and Daphné, though, I thought they were really well suited to one another.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Daphné and Manon came out at a concert after singing this song they’d written together called “Hit the Back”. I don’t need to go into detail, you all know that one by now. It became iconic in the LGBTQ+ community, and I say more power to them, because it’s still heralded as a cornerstone of LGBTQ+ music. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I kissed her onstage and introduced her as my girlfriend. I knew Imane and Sofiane started getting hundreds of phone calls the moment word got around, but I was happy to share my happiness with whoever wanted to hear it. There were going to be people who had a problem with it, but I hoped the love and light would overshadow the fear. 

**Manon Demissy:**

We were really lucky. Maybe it was because straight men sexualize women who love other women to a point that they erase our identities, but if so, it worked in our favor. There were people who were against it, obviously, but I really didn’t see that side of it much at all. I saw an overwhelming outpouring of love and support for us. 

Daphné has always identified as a lesbian, but I never really knew where I stood for a long time. Bisexual was an alright label to begin with, but I think I knew that it wasn’t the right one for me. I went with Eliott’s labelless side of things for quite a while, until somewhat recently.

Now I identify simply as queer, because I feel like it encompasses me and suits me best. Many people might disagree with that, and that’s their right, but it’s what feels right to me, so I’m going to keep identifying as such. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

“Hit the Back” sent a message, I’ll tell you that. I felt like a proud father to have Daphné writing a song like that. It was a bop too, way more on the pop side than rock, but none of us would have had it any other way. They even came up with a little dance to go along with it. Eliott and I would do it with them when they performed it sometimes. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wanted to be out in the open with Lucas like Manon and Daphné were. It had been part of what had driven us apart the first time, and I didn’t want that to happen again, but I knew we both had very different views on the matter. 

I agreed with his views on privacy, though, and at the end of the day, I decided that keeping things out of the public eye would be in our best interest. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Daphné started singing “Holy”, and we pulled “Man” from our catalogue of songs. Thankfully no one had inquired into the origins of that particular song, because clearly Daphné hadn’t written it. 

We did sing “Man” one last time, though, and I sang it with Daphné, looking at Eliott the whole time. That surely didn’t help any rumors about me, but if it was my only chance to sing that song live, I was going to take it. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas singing “Man” got me all hot and bothered in ways I hadn’t been expecting. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Singing “Man” with Lucas felt so right. I knew he was being strategic and didn’t want to be out in the way I was, but he’d written it, so he was meant to sing it. I did an ok job with it, but it was his song, through and through. Just like “Holy” was mine. Even though I couldn’t necessarily relate to the song, I still loved it, and it was a real blast to perform, especially with Lu. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

People went wild for me singing that song, actually. I think most people liked the idea of a straight guy singing it in a tongue in cheek sort of way, but I’d take what I could get. Other people did talk, obviously, because I couldn’t stop staring at Eliott, but those rumors stayed rumors as per usual. 

It was strange, though, how the rumors didn’t increase exponentially once Daphné was out with Manon and Emma was in a different relationship. If I wasn’t with Chloé, they wanted me with Daphné, and if I couldn’t be with her, they probably would have wanted me with Emma, so I was eternally grateful she and Yann were out there with their relationship. Most people didn’t even consider Eliott at all. 

**Emma Borgès:**

Manon and Daphné took the heat off Yann and I, which I was grateful for. Our relationship was doing quite well, honestly, but sometimes I’d get worried about what Yann would think if he knew about Alex. It was my right to do what I did, because we weren’t committed to one another at that point, really, but I didn’t know if he’d see it that way.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott and I fell into such an easy rhythm together that sometimes it made me uneasy. Anything good or stable in my life made me uneasy, generally. I knew Daphné was like me in that respect, so I talked to her about it. I knew I was overreacting, I did, but I found it hard not to.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

We wrote another song, “Are You Bored Yet?” about those feelings. I figured it’d be good for Lucas to just get those insecurities out in the form of a song to bridge the gap between talking to Eliott about it. I had some of the same feelings, but what Manon and I had was newer, so it was different all the same.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I didn’t know if the new song was about me or about Daphné, so I didn’t ask, I left it up to Lucas to fill me in if he was struggling with our relationship. I was surprised, though because I’d thought that what we had was perfect, because that was what it was to me.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It wasn’t that it wasn’t perfect, it was that it  _ was _ , and that terrified me because I knew perfect couldn’t last forever.

**Eliott Demaury:**

He didn’t talk to me about it for a little while, but he did eventually, which is all I could have asked for. It was dumb, how bad at communicating we were sometimes and how good we were other times. It got better, though, bit by bit, when we let it happen. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

He reminded me of ‘minute by minute’. The concept not the song.

_ (Lucas laughs) _

You’d think I would have been very tuned in to the concept by now, but apparently not. It was a really good reminder, though. I was so worried about the future that I often forgot to live in the present and enjoy the good things in my life. Eliott was one of the best of those things, for me, and I wanted to enjoy him,  _ us _ , as much as I could. 

I did ask if he was worried about being bored with this thing between us, if the simplicity that we’d fallen into— which was so far off from all the obstacles we’d had up to that point— was something bad, or made our relationship less interesting. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Consistency and comfort wasn’t uninteresting to me, it was the complete opposite. I’d never had that in a relationship, and I wouldn’t have traded it for the world. Lucas’ arms were the safest place I could think to be. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I probably cried when he said that. Not only because it felt so good to be loved like that, but also because I felt the exact same way. I felt unstoppable with Eliott in a way I’d never felt before. Most of my life my confidence had been manufactured for whoever I was trying to impress, but with Eliott I was nothing but my realest, truest self. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Just because it had taken so much chaos to get us to that point, it didn’t mean we needed that same chaos to maintain a strong relationship.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I took Eliott on a date in Chicago, because it was snowy and beautiful and it had been just over five years since we’d met for the first time. And kissed for the first time, funnily enough. We’d all taken two weeks off for the holidays and New Year’s, but Chicago was our first stop once we got back on the road. Eliott and I had celebrated the actual anniversary of when we first met privately at my place, but I wanted to surprise him with something special once we got back on the road. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas took me out into the night as snow was falling in soft flakes all around us. They stuck to his eyelashes as he looked at me with the most love I think I’d ever seen someone share. I wanted to bottle that moment up and save it in my memory forever.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It felt magical, like the universe had decided to give us one perfect night. It was all I could have asked for. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas always said he wasn’t romantic, but I’m here to tell you all that was a great big lie. Just because he had more subtle ways of showing it, it didn’t diminish the care and love he poured into so many of the things he did for me or we did together, including that night.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I took him to a bridge, the first one I could find, really, I’d asked someone random about what their favorite bridge in the city was, and figured it was close enough to our hotel that I could make it work. I remembered what he’d said about the petite ceinture in Paris, and how it was his favorite place in the city, so I thought that if we couldn’t be there, we could be under a different bridge, looking up at the same sky, and fall in love more and more with each passing second. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I nearly cried, it was so thoughtful of him to do that for me. I wanted to take him to my place when we toured in Paris, but the international leg of the tour wasn’t for a while. It warmed me, even in the bitter cold, to have him remember and try to emulate something that was important to me. 

He said, “I know your place is where you like to come when you’re alone, but I want you to know that you’re not alone anymore. You have me, from this minute to infinity.”

Alone wasn’t bad, not always, but the kind of alone he was talking about, that I’d told him about, it felt like such a release to have him tell me I wasn’t that kind of alone anymore. I started crying, and he immediately freaked out, but nothing was wrong. I was just so moved by what he’d said that I felt a release deep inside me. 

Instead of answering his frantic questions, I kissed him as the snow fell on our heads under a sky full of a billion stars, Polaris leading us once again to exactly where we were meant to be. To this day, that’s still one of the best nights of my life. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I couldn’t even feel the cold creeping in while he kissed me, just the melted snowflakes on his face brushing up against mine, his gloved hands on either side of my face. Eliott could kiss me like no other, truly. Everytime we kissed I felt like I was soaring, on top of the entire world. 

That feeling carried into my performances, and I felt like our shows were going better than they ever had before. It was electrifying, being on stage with him, and I think everyone else was charged with a similar sort of energy. We were unstoppable. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I felt like something between Lucas and Eliott might have changed over the holidays but I still wasn’t sure. No one seemed to know if they were together or not, or maybe they just didn’t feel the need to tell  _ me _ . 

My feelings had only intensified, and I didn’t know what to do with them. I wanted to tell Lucas, but I also didn’t, because there was a very high possibility I’d get my heart crushed. I just decided, instead, to try to spend more time with him and feel out the situation.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Tour was still ticking by steadily, and I decided to try to make more of an effort to hang out with people other than Eliott. Eliott and I had every night in hotels or on the bus, and even more time when we were travelling, I wanted to make sure I was spending time with the other people that meant the world to me too. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I’d really missed hanging out with Lucas in the way we used to. He was sober now, and that was cool, I thought he had been for a while anyway, but he still liked to go out to parties or just chill and make music in his free time, and I also liked both of those things. It wasn’t just him, I’d definitely been neglecting our relationship because of Emma, but when he started making more of an effort with everyone that wasn’t on his bus again, I decided to do the same. 

Not just with him, with everyone. Manon and I were long past her distaste for me, and I actually really loved hanging out with her. Daphné and I had never really been close, but Manon and Daphné were a package deal, and I found new appreciation for her as time went on. 

**Emma Borgès:**

The girl squad was back in action, including Imane and Alexia. Alexia came out for a few shows and we decided to have some girl time with the five of us. She hung out with Arthur too, of course, because they were really close, but I sort of wished we’d spent more time bonding as girls earlier on. I loved the boys too, don’t get me wrong, but the girl squad hit differently when we were all together.

**Idriss Bakhellal (actor,** **_Life is Now_ ** **):**

I visited with Alexia once, because I missed Eliott and Sof and my sister and I was between films. Imane was off with the girls, so I got in some good bonding time with Sof and Eliott. It was strange to see Eliott without Lucas, but he seemed happier than I’d ever seen him before, and I couldn’t get enough of it. Sofiane was in the midst of wedding plans with Imane, because even on tour, Imane couldn’t function unless she was doing ten things at once, and we discussed some things my parents were helping to plan as well. 

Sofiane asked me to be his best man, and I nearly cried. Of course I was going to be his best man. Eliott was like my brother, but Sofiane was my best friend. And Imane was my baby sister, so if I was the best man I’d get to embarrass her with a toast. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

It was still surreal to me that I was marrying Imane. Most days you couldn’t wipe the smile off my face with your best efforts. Idriss was my obvious choice for best man, but I didn’t want Eliott to feel bad about it.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I totally understood why Idriss was the best man. I was perfectly content with even a small role in the wedding party. As long as Sofi was happy, and Imane was happy, I was happy. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Idriss cried when I asked him to be my best man, and it was sort of endearing. I don’t think I’d ever seen him cry before, other than in his films.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I remained entirely stoic about the whole thing, of course, no matter how emotional I was. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Idriss cried like a baby. If only we’d had camera phones back then, I would have recorded that as blackmail.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

With Eliott out with Sofiane and Idriss, Baz, Yann, Arthur and I spent time together as the gang, like we’d been back in the day. I’d forgotten just how much chaotic energy the four of us contained at any given moment, and how much I’d been missing it.

Arthur and Baz were close as ever, and Yann and I were too, so we had a dynamic that just worked all together. It was fun to mess around like we were back in high school and to come up with dumb things to do when we performed that were inside jokes between the four of us. 

**Yann Cazas:**

‘Check the gang’.

_ (Yann laughs) _

It’s really not even that funny, it’s kind of dumb, but Baz started this thing where he’d yell “Check the gang!” really loud and attempt to give us all high fives. Somewhere along the way, we all stopped participating, so now it was a big joke to leave him hanging. I really don’t know why it was so funny to us, but it was. Still is to me now, whenever I think about it.

**Basile Savary:**

I’d try to trick them into giving me high fives, especially onstage, and the audiences caught on to the gag after a while. They’d yell ‘check the gang’ and watch as the three of them tried to avoid me to the best of their abilities, all while we were all laughing our asses off. 

It was one of my favorite moments of our performances. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Lucas was so open, in a way I don’t think I’d ever seen. It wasn’t a ‘share all your secrets’ type of open, it was just an inherent vulnerability that he couldn’t seem to shake. It was a beautiful thing to see, considering all the closed off isolationist behaviors we’d been privy to in the past. His mask was gone, almost entirely. 

It, unfortunately, only made me fall harder. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It was crazy how much brighter the world seemed when I was happy and willing to open myself up to it. I hadn’t a care in the world, for the most part, and it was liberating. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Somehow, when I wasn’t looking everyone’s problems had been solved and they were all happier than I’d ever seen them all at once. Instead of being disconcerted, I basked in that glow, because I deserved it too. I’d had to deal with so much shit, some of it they would never even know, but it had all led to that momentary bliss. 

They were easily the biggest band in the entire world, their album had charted in every major country in the world, and their videos were still getting heavy play on MTV even though they’d been released months or years ago. Everyone loved them, and they loved themselves. It was the beginning of the end, but boy was it beautiful. 

**Manon Demissy:**

The good moments were so good that now they all get jumbled together, in a sense. Months flew by and everything was just  _ good. _ It was so different, so strange, that I’m not sure I processed a lot of it, just let it happen. 

Daphné and I tried to go on a date in every city we went to, even if it was just taking a few minutes before soundcheck to walk hand in hand around the venue. 

I sang a few more songs during the shows too, some I’d helped to write, some Daphné or Lucas or Eliott had written and thought my voice would sound best with them. I thought of the girl I’d been when Lallemissy was performing at our senior prom, and I wondered what she would have thought if she could see me now. She probably wouldn’t have believed it, in all honesty. 

Even living it, I wasn’t sure if any of it was real or just a very well crafted fever dream. Some days I’m still not sure which it was, and I think that’s for the best. Don’t want to taint the memories with hindsight.

**Basile Savary:**

Daph Bean’s birthday was May third, and I wanted to do something special to celebrate it for her onstage, so I chose a song for us to perform in her honor, something with more panache than ‘happy birthday’. No one was versed in musicals like I was, which is a damn shame because in another life Eliott and Lucas would have made an excellent pair of star crossed revolutionaries in Les Miserables— though that wasn’t really the point of that particular musical, I suppose— but I digress.

The film for  _ A Chorus Line _ had come out nearly three years prior, and it was one of Maria and I’s favorites. She was really big into musicals too, that was how I got into them, really. I thought it’d be appropriate to perform “One” from  _ A Chorus Line _ in honor of Daph Bean for her birthday show, and even though none of them knew the song, once I got the sheet music for it, they were all in. 

Daphné loved musicals too, as far as I could remember, so I was hoping the song wouldn’t seem out of place for her. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It was an appropriate song for Daphy. 

_ (Lucas smiles) _

She really is quite a sensational woman. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Baz was so worried about Em and I taking things the wrong way, like we’d think he didn’t love us as much if we sang this song for Daphné.

_ (Manon laughs) _

We assured him many times that we agreed this was a good song to sing for Daphné on her birthday, and that we most certainly did not take it personally. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Twenty six was a weird age, and I didn’t know how to feel about it. I was still young, sure, but I was in my late twenties now, which in my mind was basically my thirties, then my forties, then I was middle aged, then I was elderly, and so on. It was quite the spiral. 

But then they sang that song for me on stage— I knew it, too, I shared a love of musicals with Baz, and he knew that— and I didn’t care how old I was turning, I just loved that I had them to share major moments of my life with.

I was overjoyed and overwhelmed and people in the crowd started singing along, even though this was a rock concert, and I just felt so loved on a multitude of levels. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I vowed to go see a musical on Broadway when our tour made it to New York after that, because I’d never been much into show tunes, but I had a newfound appreciation for them after that. Baz told me I’d like Les Mis, so I decided to start my musical education there.

**Basile Savary:**

I knew I’d turn Lucas to the dark side. Wow, speaking of the dark side,  _ Star Wars _ was a thing we lived through. The four of us, Yann, Lucas, Arthur, and I were massive fans. Arthur more than anyone. If there was ever a chance for us to watch those films over and over again, Arthur was first in line. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

_ Star Wars _ ? Yeah I was a massive fan back in the day. Still am, if I’m being entirely honest. What can I say, old habits die hard.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

It was Manon’s birthday next, June second, and I wanted to do something equally special for her, but I knew a song in her honor at a massive concert wasn’t necessarily her style. She seemed a bit melancholy beforehand, and I thought I understood what she was feeling so I planned a day to bring us back to childhood in a sense. Neither of our childhoods had been exactly what we’d wanted or needed, so I took her to an amusement park and just let her do whatever she wanted. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Little known fact about me: amusement parks are my weakness. The food? Incredible. The rides? Life changing. The stupid games where they swindle you into spending a million bucks for a tiny plush toy? Revolutionary. When Daphné took me there, I wondered if she’d stepped into my brain and seen exactly what I’d wanted. 

It was so fun, feeling like a kid for the day. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Manon and I premiered “Ribs” at the show on her birthday. I had no idea what she’d been up to with Daphné all day, but her stage presence that night was insane, and that song was emotional on more levels than it had been when we’d written it.

We called it happy birthday’s sad older sister, even if it wasn’t  _ sad _ , necessarily. Just melancholic, in both the best and worst ways. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Will not lie, “Ribs” hit me deep. Are any of us surprised by that, though? The song was incredible.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I could only wonder what was in store for my birthday at the end of the month. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

June was also pride month, and I wanted to celebrate that if possible, with as many band members as were willing. I knew that Lucas wanted to, but was scared about what people might think, so if the whole band went to a march or something I thought he’d feel better about enjoying it. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

If the band was going to a pride march, there was no way I wasn’t also going to be there.

**Noée Daucet (journalist, Rolling Stone):**

Alexia told me we were going to New York for pride to be with the band, and I just agreed, no questions asked. It was easier that way, to let Alexia be her headstrong self. I loved her for it. Mika and Camille decided to come with too, because they both had serious cases of FOMO. In order to get time off work, I promised an article about Manon, Daphné, and Eliott and their identities in relation to pride and the LGBTQ+ community. It was a sign of major progress that the magazine would allow me to publish anything like that at all, but I think that Seven Minutes in Heaven were so big that people would have done just about anything for them. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

New York really was the best place to be for pride. There were a whole lot of allies at the march, and we’d gotten the whole band to come, so I didn’t feel as nervous about the day. Noée and Alexia were there too, and Manon, Daphy, and Eliott would be giving Noée an interview about pride and what it meant to them. I should have been a part of it. I wish I had been a part of it. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Noée and Alexia were the only ones who knew I was bi, and I wanted to keep it that way a little while longer, but seeing how loving and accepting everyone was at pride really made me want to come out and be proud in a way I’d never felt before. 

I felt like Lucas was in the same boat as me. I saw his wistful eyes, watching people cheer as Daph Bean and Manon kissed for the world to see, or as Mika and Camille walked hand in hand like it was the most natural thing in the world. I really did wonder what was holding him back, because he’d come to terms with who he was quite a while ago. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It really is the one thing I don’t have an answer to, why I didn’t come out sooner. I was confident in my sexuality, I was in a relationship with the man of my dreams, I was starting to be less and less afraid of what other people might think with each passing day.

So why did I stay quiet about it until now? I don’t know. I wish I did. I should have done this sooner, thirty or so years sooner, but I just physically couldn’t. Maybe it had more to do with keeping some sense of privacy, like I’ve stated before, or maybe there was still that hint of lingering internalized homophobia that kept me hidden. I really don’t know.

I’m sorry I didn’t do it sooner, mostly to myself, but I  _ am _ doing it now, being the person I’ve always wanted to be.

**Eliott Demaury:**

My first pride was such a great experience! All of us were there together, and the whole community embraced us, Daphné, Manon, and I in particular, and I knew I wanted to do this every year. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I wasn’t a voice for change, I was just a girl who had no idea what she was doing half the time. But the people there looked up to me for some reason, and I decided to be the type of girl who could be a voice for change in the future. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Manon’s always had an eye for activism in a way that I haven’t. It’s not that I don’t want to be as involved as her, I’m just always a bit too worried about what people might think of me or saying the wrong thing or being misinterpreted. Manon’s not like that, though. She’s a force.

**Basile Savary:**

I thought it was nice, to go to pride and show my support even though I wasn’t gay or anything myself. Maria came with all our LA friends that weekend and it was really nice to see her in an environment that was so surrounded by love I hardly stopped smiling for even a minute.

**Mika Dolleron (owner, Under the Sun):**

Lucas looked so happy but so sad at the same time. I prided myself on being somewhat of a guru for him— or anyone who needed it, really— so I took him aside after the march to make sure everything was ok with him.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Everything was perfect, truly. I was just guilty because of all the lying I was doing to the world.

**Mika Dolleron:**

I told him that he didn’t owe anything to anyone, at the end of the day. Yes, it was great to be out and proud, but no one would have wanted him to be forced out and proud because he felt guilty for  _ not _ being like that. There are small forms of bravery, too, a lot of them he already weaved into his everyday life. Just being himself and allowing himself to love who he wanted to love the man he loved was enough.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t know how he knew Eliott and I were back together, but he told me it was obvious to anyone with eyes. Apparently no one else we knew had eyes. 

Talking to Mika was cathartic, because even though he could be a bitch sometimes— though I could too— he really had a lot of empathy and care for me in a way a lot of the older male figures in my life hadn’t. 

Don’t get me wrong I’m not projecting my daddy issues onto Mika, because he’s not  _ that _ much older than me, but I’m saying that it was nice to have him as a positive role model in my life. He taught me a lot about myself even when he wasn’t trying to.

**Emma Borgès:**

Excuse the pun, but I was very proud to be a part of it, even if I’ve never really identified as a part of the community myself. Maybe in another life. Though I did make out with Daphné once… that was mostly because I was drunk though. I’m very sexually fluid when I’m drunk.

**Yann Cazas:**

Our post pride show was one of the best we’d ever had. The energy in there was out of this world. It helped that it was New York too, because those were always some of the rowdiest shows anyways. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

The best shows were the gayest shows, what can I say. It’s a hill I’m willing to die on. 

**Basile Savary:**

The tension between Lucas and Eliott was  _ insane _ . I was fairly positive that they were, at the very least, fucking again. If it would have been possible, I think they could have melted the stage, or set it on fire, even. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

After talking with Mika, I was all fired up, in a sense. Such a big part of me wanted to make out with Eliott right there on stage but aside from that not exactly being the way I wanted to come out, it was a bit unprofessional, I supposed. 

Even so, every song we sang felt so raw, so real, so intimate, like we were the only two people in this packed stadium. During “Je T’aime”, which Daphné often sang, I just stood back and watched Eliott. I even forgot I was supposed to be subbing the background percussion in Daphy’s absence, though I don’t think anyone noticed. 

He was so beautiful under those light. He had his hair mussed up and rainbow paint on his face and every line of his face was coated with such an emotional depth that I felt it in my very bones. He looked over at me at one point during the song, like he’d known I was standing there awestruck by him, and I mouthed “I love you”. 

He blushed bright red, like it was the first time I’d ever said it, and his smile lit up the stage tenfold. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

How could I not smile bigger than I’d ever smiled in my life when Lucas was looking at me like that and saying he loved me?

**Yann Cazas:**

I saw Lucas mouth to Eliott that he loved him. It wasn’t that I was surprised, because duh, but I was taken aback momentarily. I’d never seen Lucas’ face as open as it was in that moment. Truly.

**Eliott Demaury:**

We closed the show with “Minute by Minute” like we usually did, before the encore, and there was definitely some closeness we usually tried to avoid. We brushed fingers, he looked at me like I was his world, and I did the same, we sang face to face, we let the world see how in love we were but they didn’t even notice. That was fine with us. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t know how I’d top that for Eliott’s birthday.

**Manon Demissy:**

Thank god we were in hotels that night, instead of on the bus, if you get what I mean. For practically everyone’s sake.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I thought Manon was saving herself for marriage, but she told me that was just something she said to Charles to retain some sense of autonomy in their relationship. Still, I would have waited as long as she wanted, but she said she wanted it now. So that’s what we did. Virginity is just a construct anyway, designed to control and belittle women on either side of it.

**Manon Demissy:**

Daphné was the first person I’d ever felt like that with, and I didn’t see the point in waiting any longer. I loved her so much my heart nearly burst every single day, and I wanted us to bridge that gap of added intimacy if she wanted the same. Luckily for me, she did.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Everyone was in a better mood than usual after our New York shows. I decided it was best not to question it, and I just let it happen. It wasn’t my business if there weren’t any problems being caused.

**Alexia Martineau:**

God damn was everyone horny as fuck. I mean, I was too, sure, Noée and I had a great sex life, but phew. I felt bad for Arthur, being the only one not in a relationship at the time. I mean, Lucas and Eliott were ‘single’ but of course I knew they were back together. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

All I wanted was Lucas, but I was willing to settle for something else in the meantime. There were still hundreds of people who would have worshipped the ground I walked on if I asked them to. Not that I did, ask them to, that would have made me my father, and he was number one on the list of people I didn’t want to be. 

I had a, uh, three person experience in New York, if you know what I mean. It was the first time I ever did it, and I have to say, it wasn’t half bad. I highly recommend it.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott loved this old Charlie Chaplin movie called  _ The Kid _ . He talked about it a whole bunch, but I’d never seen it. I had to pull some strings, but money is power and I had a lot of both, so I made things happen when I needed to. 

There was a drive-in theater in the city we’d be touring in during his birthday, so I rented the whole place out just for the two of us, and I got them to play that movie for us as the sun set and the stars started to fill the sky. It was June, so it was quite warm, but it got cold enough at night that we could snuggle up to one another comfortably. I even rented a pickup truck for the day to take us out there, set up a little blanket fort in the bed of the truck. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Always, this asshole claims he’s not romantic and then does shit like that. It wasn’t just a grand romantic gesture, it was a testament of just how much he paid attention and how astute those observations were. Sure, remembering one of my favorite movies wasn’t that hard, but remembering the one time I’d talked about seeing it under the stars being one of my greatest fantasies years ago? I don’t know how he did it.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t even try to remember all these things about Eliott, it just happened. There was an entire compartment of my brain dedicated to him, but I sort of loved that it was there. It made moments like that birthday so much more special, seeing the light in his eyes when he realized that I’d remembered something he’d told me in passing once. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Obviously, something had to be done about this. Lucas couldn’t out-romance me, the self proclaimed king of romance. It was a good thing his birthday was after mine, that way I knew exactly what I needed to one up. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I knew it wasn’t worth it to even protest, Eliott would always have something up his sleeve. We’d made it back to LA for my birthday, because pretty much right after that we’d be taking a week off, then travelling to Europe to start the international leg of the tour. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wanted his guard down, so I made him think I wasn’t doing anything special. I mean, we had amazing morning sex, I made him breakfast in bed, I did whatever he wanted because it was his special day, and I organized the entire crowd to sing happy birthday to him, but those were normal, predictable things. I did debut a new song that I hadn’t shared with him, called “Wildflower” which made him blush so red on stage I was sure he’d give himself away. That was the goal. It was a good— pardon the pun— red herring, though, because I wanted him to think that was all that was happening on his birthday. 

It was not, of course.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

After the show I thanked him for all he’d done, and said that it was one of my best birthdays to date. The one where he’d arranged the little party on the beach and the one when we’d released “I Think I’m In Love” had it beat, but it was still up there. 

He smiled at me in a way that had me a bit suspicious, but in the end I thought nothing of it. Since we were in LA, Eliott had driven us to the venue, me, Daphy, and Manon, but Daphy and Manon wanted to go out after the show, so we were on our own for the night.

**Arthur Broussard:**

His birthday probably wasn’t the best time, but I decided to tell Lucas about my feelings after that show. The only problem was that he was gone before I could. I almost went to his place, but thought better of it. It could wait a few days longer if needed. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I wasn’t paying attention to the road while we drove, I never would if I wasn’t the one behind the wheel, which I hadn’t been for quite some time. I still had a motorcycle, but I barely rode it anymore, especially with touring and all. 

Suddenly, when the terrain got rougher, it became clear to me that we weren’t heading home. When I started to question it and peek out the window, he slipped a blindfold over my eyes and told me to be patient. 

_ (Lucas laughs) _

If it was anyone other than Eliott, I would have been certain I was being kidnapped. 

After a little bit of walking, Eliott led me to wherever he wanted me to go with my eyes obscured. It was dark enough anyway, I argued, the blindfold felt unnecessary. He disagreed vehemently. 

Soon enough, we came to a stop, and Eliott took the blindfold off. When I saw where we were, my eyes filled with tears, happy ones. 

We were at the Hollywood sign, just like the first time we’d kissed— discounting our bathroom escapade— and the weight of who we were to one another and how far we’d come from that moment wasn’t lost on me. 

There was nothing I could say to express just how much it meant to me that he brought me there, so I said nothing at all. He understood, even so.

He told me to look out at the city, at the world, and take it in. I did as he said, and then asked why. He didn’t answer at first, just pulled me closer and looked as deeply into my eyes as was humanly possible, and then he said, “That’s the world out there, and it’s all ours.”

It really did feel like it, at that moment. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wiped the tears as they fell down his cheeks, and he kept trying to explain them away, but I knew it wasn’t borne of sadness. I was almost in tears too. There was nothing more important to me than loving Lucas, and it was crazy to think that, as much as I did love him, the world loved him even more. All I could do was try to match it as best as I could.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It was the perfect night. I think I say that a lot when I talk about nights with Eliott, but it really was the perfect night. Best birthday ever, even better than the ones I thought could never be beat. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I waited a few days after Lucas’ birthday, mostly to work up the nerve, and then I went over there uninvited, determined to tell him how I felt. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was excited when Arthur came over, because Eliott and the girls were out, so I was just chilling alone and I was desperately bored. Arthur always had things for us to do or exciting conversations to talk about. He could come up with the wildest scenarios and we’d talk about them for hours on end. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Lucas seemed so happy to see me, and no one was home, so I figured there was no better time. Of course, that meant I’d wait until we were hours deep into conversation. Lucas told me he had this song he was working on, and he wanted to play it for me to see what I thought. So, we went to his music room, and I sat on the piano bench beside him, and he played for me.

He talked a bit first, about where he wanted the song to go and he was always so passionate about it, waving his arms wildly with a spark in his eyes that lit him up inside and out. I thought that it meant something, that he was sharing all this with  _ me _ , in particular. 

I mostly listened, then watched as he started to play, singing softly and melodically. I might have been more in love with Lucas’ voice than with him, honestly, but I don’t think I’m the only one. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

For the record, I had absolutely no idea Arthur had those feelings for me. I didn’t even know that he was bi, the thought never would have crossed my mind. One minute I was just singing a song I’d written about Eliott, the next Arthur was just staring at me strangely. I think I sort of laughed and asked what was wrong, and then the next thing I knew he was leaning in like he was about to kiss me. 

I panicked, so I fell backwards off the piano bench.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I immediately wanted to be picked up by aliens set on taking me as far away from there as possible. I felt so fucking stupid. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I saw the whole thing happen. I’d heard music in the creation room when I came back from getting Lucas croissants, so I went there to tell him I was back. I hadn’t ever considered that Arthur was there or that he might have liked Lucas like that either, but once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. I left to give them space, but my mind was spinning out in a million different directions.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I apologized fervently, and I told him that Eliott and I were back together. Honestly, I’d thought they’d all figured it out by then, but if I had to say it explicitly, I would. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I just sat there like an idiot while Lucas told me he and Eliott had been together for nearly a year. He seemed surprised I didn’t know, but I’d gotten good at not seeing things I didn’t want to see. 

I’m not sure I said anything more, I just up and left, maybe apologizing over my shoulder as I did so. He didn’t stop me, or try to talk about it more, so I kept running. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was a bit shaken up by it all, not because Arthur had done anything wrong, especially if he didn’t know Eliott and I were together, but because I felt like shit for rejecting him the way I did. I loved Eliott, I wanted to be with Eliott, but Arthur was one of my best friends. I didn’t want our relationship to suffer because of this, or for him to think that I hated him or something. 

There were croissants on the counter when I went back into the kitchen, and I probably swore under my breath because that meant Eliott was back, and I don’t know if he saw or heard anything, but I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas found me out by the pool, and I knew that he knew I saw something. I think he thought I’d be mad at him, but I wasn’t. He hadn’t done anything wrong. I wasn’t even mad at Arthur, though I wanted to be. That wasn’t what was bothering me.

He started apologizing profusely and I cut him off, there was no reason to do so. I just asked how he was feeling, and he said weird, which I could understand. I felt weird too. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I remember coming home that day, but I didn’t know what happened until later on. Eliott and Lucas were both sitting out by the pool in silence, neither one of them near the other, and they just stared out as far as their eyes would take them. I wondered if they’d gotten into an argument, and I hoped for everyone else’s sake that they hadn’t.

**Manon Demissy:**

Eliott stayed at his place with Idriss that night, and Lucas stole me away from Daphné to talk. I was worried about what he needed to talk about and when he told me I was shocked. I asked why Eliott was mad about it, and he told me that he wasn’t, they just both were at a loss for how to react. 

First, I told him that he and Eliott needed to tell all of our immediate friends, officially, that they were together, so no confusion would arise. Second, he needed to talk to Arthur. I knew he didn’t want their friendship to dwindle, and I really didn’t think Arthur would take it that hard if it had just been the wrong time. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t want Eliott to be worried, though, about Arthur having feelings for me, and I was pretty sure he was. This was new territory I don’t think any of us had considered, and I wanted to at least talk to Arthur before I went ahead and made assumptions. Unfortunately, he made that very difficult for me.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I wasn’t hiding, just keeping myself busy. I told Alexia and Noée about my fuck up and they were surprisingly unhelpful. Alexia thought I was dumb for not knowing Lucas and Eliott were together, and thought it was funny that I liked him at all. When she was great at advice, she was amazing, but when she didn’t know what to say… not the best.

**Alexia Martineau:**

Yeah, probably didn’t handle that the best, but I didn’t realize how crushed and stressed he was about it. I thought it had just been a heat of the moment thing, knowing that Lucas was gay and wanting to go for something like that. I didn’t know if he’d had experiences with anyone other than cis women. 

I certainly didn’t think he was in love.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Maybe love was a strong word to use, I didn’t really know what love was, if I’m being honest. I’d spent too much of my life looking at Lucas with rose colored glasses, though, but I still didn’t see it at the time. It was hard not to see it, when it was all I’d ever known. All the times he’d fucked up or been an asshole or whatever, I didn’t see them that way. Even way back when, it had always been impossible for me to blame Lucas for anything. I thought he was perfect, or close to it. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Why was I freaking out so much? I don’t know. I knew Lucas only had feelings for me, it wasn’t that, I don’t even know what it was. I didn’t take the time to think too hard about it, I just let myself ruminate in all my distorted emotions instead. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

And, just like that, we were back on the road. I talked with Eliott a bit beforehand, and we told everyone we were together. Most of them looked unsurprised, and I tried to ignore how Arthur wouldn’t meet my eyes.

**Yann Cazas:**

The feeling in the air was different. Something had happened in that week off, but I didn’t know what it was. Tour had been nothing but wonderful so far, but now I had a feeling we were headed for the worst. 

**Basile Savary:**

Arthur told me he’d tried to kiss Lucas. I asked him how the hell he hadn’t known Lucas and Eliott were back together, they practically eye fucked the entire time they shared the stage, but he told me he’d gotten good at not seeing things he didn’t want to see, which I understood.

He and Lucas hadn’t spoken since then, but I told him that they had to. Even if it was uncomfortable. A bit of discomfort wasn’t worth losing their friendship over. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

It was annoying when Baz was right, but he was nearly always right.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Arthur asked if he could talk to me after one of our shows, and I was grateful he’d come to me. We hadn’t been off, necessarily, but none of us were performing up to our usual standard, and it was probably because of Arthur and I’s unspoken tension.

**Manon Demissy:**

Daphné was being a bit cagey again and I was worried about what was bothering her. I didn’t think it had anything to do with the two of us, but I couldn’t be sure. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I’d gotten some news I’d never thought I’d get— ever, and I didn’t know what to do with it. So, instead, I didn’t deal with it or talk about it, because I might have been twenty six, but I was no model human. I handled my feelings just about as well as Eliott made dinner. Which was to say: horribly. 

Part of it was because I’ve always been an eternal people pleaser. That’s why I took so long to come out, honestly. I’d been ready since our first album, but then it was Charles holding me back, or Imane being worried about our image, or the world thinking Lucas and I were together, and I held my true self back because I wanted to live up to people’s expectations. It’s why fame held such an allure to me, why I never backed down from the spotlight. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I apologized for trying to kiss him, but he waved me off. He said he wasn’t upset at all, just surprised, and that he should have been upfront about where he was at with Eliott. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I took Manon’s advice to heart, tried to emphasize that, whatever happened, the most important thing was that he was still one of my best friends. I knew what it was like to pine for someone I thought would never love me back, and it wasn’t fun. But, if he was willing to look past it and be friends despite some feelings that had arisen, I was more than willing to do the same.

**Arthur Broussard:**

He gave me an out, so I took it as fast as humanly possible. It didn’t have to mean anything, and now that I knew where he and Eliott stood, I could suffer in silence. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas told me he and Arthur had talked things through, and they were back to where they’d always been, no strings attached, so I took that at face value. I had no reason not to. Arthur didn’t say anything to me about the whole ordeal, but he and Lucas both looked much more at ease, so I tried to do the same with all of my thoughts. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

It was crazy to think that the tour was a bit over halfway completed. Where had the time gone? Sofiane and I had still been working on wedding prep, aiming for July since the tour ended in June. Maybe it was also crazy to give that little amount of time between the two, but neither of us saw a point in waiting longer than that. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Wedding planning was one of the most fun parts of the tour. We got to talk to both of our families more often than usual, including Idriss, and Imane and I were almost always on the same wavelength. If we weren’t, I was more than willing to pretend I was on her side about certain decisions just to see her smile. I liked vanilla cake, but our wedding cake was made of chocolate because Imane loved it, and I didn’t care about vanilla as long as Imane was happy.

**Manon Demissy:**

I tried to get Daphné involved with Sofiane and Imane’s wedding planning, because she loved that sort of thing, so I thought it might cheer her up. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I appreciated all of Manon’s efforts, I really did, but what I really needed was to face what was going on in my life and I didn’t want to. Instead, I cut my hair with craft scissors on the tour bus in the middle of the night.

**Manon Demissy:**

She cut her hair to her chin. I loved it, because I loved every way she wore her hair, but it was very different. Her hair had always reminded me of Rapunzel, long and golden and beautiful. Now, it was short, bleached, and messy. It was a really cool look, but it didn’t look like Daphné.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was the one who found Daphné just after she’d cut her hair, because, as the local insomniac, I heard her gasp from the bathroom on the bus. There was hair all over the floor and she looked like she’d seen a ghost. I thought her new ‘do was badass, but I think she was freaking out a little bit. I’d never seen her hair shorter than just below her collarbones, so I could see how that would be alarming for her. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Oh, yeah, I hated it. Regretted it as soon as I did it, but it was also so cathartic. My hair was easily long enough to reach my mid back at that point, and seeing such a stark difference was a very surreal moment. It reminded me of why I craved control so much, because my impulses never led where I hoped they would.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

At least she didn’t, like, shave her head. Eliott almost did once, and thankfully I talked him out of that. Though, I’m sure he would have pulled it off, actually. 

**Basile Savary:**

Daph Bean’s short hair was new. Not bad, just new. I actually really liked it, but Manon and Lucas warned the rest of us about mentioning it in any way shape or form.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Surprisingly, the audiences liked my short hair. At least I think they did, sometimes it was hard to tell. I will admit that tossing my hair around on stage was a bit more fun with it at that length, I felt more like a rockstar.

**Emma Borgès:**

Maybe it was Europe that had everyone going wild. Something in the air, perhaps. I tried to get Yann to fuck me on a gondola in Venice, but he was worried about being arrested for public indecency, so that plan was foiled. It was probably good that he vetoed it, honestly. Not one of my best ideas. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I wanted to take Emma for romantic walks or dinners, not act like we were friends with benefits again. Our sex life had always been great, sure, but I wanted us to be more than that, and sometimes it felt like we were still just friends with a side of fucking.

**Manon Demissy:**

We were in Paris for the anniversary of Celine’s death. I think that was why it hit Lucas harder than it had for the past couple of years. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I wanted— needed— to honor her in some way. It had been  _ eight _ years. Eight whole years without the person I loved the most in the world by my side. Some days, I didn’t think of her at all, and that scared me. I never wanted to forget her, I never wanted the world to forget her, even if they didn’t know her.

Plus, we were in Paris, where she was from, and where I was from, in some sense. It did a disservice to her to not show how my love for her still endured in the city she’d loved more than anything. She’d always wanted to move back there, and we almost had, but then she met Richard and you know the rest. 

I would have loved to have been able to buy her a little summer home somewhere in the city, and to spend my time off with her there. With Eliott, too. I really wished that they had met, because I knew my mom would have loved him. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I checked in on Lucas to make sure he was ok. He said that he was, and that he was just thinking. I didn’t really know what that meant, but I told him I was there if he needed anything at all. I told Manon the same, though I knew she was always less affected than Lucas was, because Celine was only her stepmother. 

I wish I would have been able to meet Celine. The way Lucas talks about her, you’d think she pulled the moon down from the sky for him every night as a personal treat. Maybe she did, who am I to say.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t want to sing “Mon Cœur”, I’d already done that on her birthday, and it didn’t feel special enough. I thought about the songs she sang to me as a child, some lullabies in French, some hymns she’d remembered from church, and it hit me. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I told you that Lucas only ever sang “Amazing Grace” one more time after Celine’s funeral. This was that time. So heartfelt and bittersweet that I don’t think the audience said a single word the entire time.

**Yann Cazas:**

They all just sat there in awe, and I think we did too. He said he wanted to sing it acapella, so we obliged, and wow. That’s all I have to say.

**Arthur Broussard:**

My heart did some backflips and I tried not to notice them.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I’d never heard him sing like that before. His vocals were always technically flawless, but when he sang that song he let in all the emotions he was feeling, let his voice crack and waver in all the right places. I’d never been more in awe of him. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I only hoped she was somewhere watching me from up above, and that she was proud of me. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Things started to fly by faster and faster again after Paris. Paris had been it’s own thing entirely, it felt like the entire world stood still, but after that it started spinning again at a faster rate to make up for lost time. 

**Emma Borgès:**

Yann tried to take me to all of these destinations in every city we went to, but I didn’t see the point. Why not just be spontaneous? We didn’t have to have this great foreign excursion everywhere we went, it made it all feel less special, I guess. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I just wanted her to know how much I loved her. 

**Basile Savary:**

I missed Maria a little extra, seeing six of the eight of us being all loved up across the world. Eight, if you counted Imane and Sofiane, though they were much more lowkey about it. 

Eliott and Lucas had a tendency to disappear into the night and come back looking like they’d either found god or been fucked within an inch of their lives. For all I knew, both of those things did happen. 

International calls were a bitch, though, especially with time zone differences, so I just looked up at the sky at night and hoped she was looking at it too, somewhere across the world. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

When Lucas wasn’t with Eliott, he was with me. I think he was trying to prove to me that nothing had to change, and I was grateful for that, the somewhat forced normalcy, but it did nothing for my bleeding heart. I tried to turn the feelings off, I wanted to more than anything, but they were there, always. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wasn’t sure what to make of Lucas and Arthur hanging out so much. On one hand, it was normal, because they’d always done that before, but on the other, I  _ knew _ how Arthur felt, and Lucas did too. I didn’t think it was going to help Arthur move on if Lucas was right there with him all the time. 

I suppose that’s hypocritical of me to say, though, because it had been the same way with Lucas and I while I was still with Lucille.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

My favorite mornings were the ones after we stayed at hotels in foreign cities and Eliott was still asleep beside me, face pressed into his pillow and the angle of his body lit by the pale morning glow streaming through the curtains.

Sometimes we’d order room service, or I’d hit him with a pillow to unceremoniously wake him up and ask for attention. A great many pillow fights started that way. We were always in some of the fanciest suites the hotels provided, and it was hard not to let it go to my head, just a little bit. 

If I pretended I was a prince, some mornings, waking up on my silk bed sheets, that was between me, myself, and I. I knew the world wasn’t ready for a prince like me. They were hardly ready for someone like me anyway, prince or otherwise. They just didn’t like to look beyond my mask, and I was fine with that.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Imane and I started taking contract negotiations seriously again somewhere around Asia. It was nearing the year’s end, and we only had about six months left on our before they’d have to start working on a new album, so it was up to us to decide what that meant, exactly. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

We settled on three more albums, because I thought that was fairly doable. If worse came to worst, they could record all the new songs they’d made for the tours, or release some unused demos if inspiration didn’t strike. We told everyone in an unceremonious manner, and they all took it like it was something they’d expected anyway. 

**Emma Borgès:**

Three more albums seemed like nothing, when you considered that we might be doing this until we were old and gray.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Three more albums was exciting for me, in particular, because that meant more time for me to branch out and show what I was made of. I could write love songs about girls, and they would sell because anything we did sold. 

**Manon Demissy:**

These people were my family, in all the ways that mattered. I was more happy than I knew what to do with that we’d have three more albums after this tour. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Three more albums and possible tours with Eliott by my side every step of the way didn’t sound too shabby, not at all. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I still didn’t feel like I was fully a part of the band sometimes, because they’d done two other albums without me, and they’d all known each other since high school besides Manon and Lucas, but with three more albums I’d have a chance to fit in more and more every day. I wanted to be remembered as a part of the band. An integral part. 

**Basile Savary:**

I didn’t know if I wanted three more albums. Sometimes, I wanted to go home to Maria and quit the business altogether. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

My first thought was that I didn’t know how I’d survive it, but I figured three more albums would give me plenty of time to get over Lucas. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Sometimes I worried that Emma never would have been with me if we hadn’t been in the same band, but since it didn’t seem that was ending any time soon, things with Emma didn’t look like they’d be ending either. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Since we had some sort of glimpse at our future, the past began to catch up with me once again, and I finally broke down in Tokyo and told Manon everything. 

I had a little sister, it seemed. She was my father’s daughter, with another woman. Another addict like my mom, and she’d died recently of an accidental overdose, leaving my half sister with no parents since my father had run off again. I didn’t know how they traced her back to me or why they couldn’t find my dad, but I was her legal guardian now. I think she was two, or something, being kept with a foster family for the time being. That wasn’t what I wanted for her, obviously, but I wasn’t ready to be a mom, especially to someone else’s baby. I didn’t even know if I wanted kids, I’d never really considered it at length.

**Manon Demissy:**

Of all the things I thought might have been bothering Daphné, that one never crossed my mind. I wanted to be there for her of course, but I did wonder what that meant for us. The girl was her sister, not her child, but she was two years old, so that wasn’t really much different. Daph told me she felt guilty for leaving this child in a foster home while she was on tour, but her priority was the band. She asked me if that made her a horrible person.

Maybe it did, but if she was horrible, then I was too, because I would have done the same at that point in my life. The one real problem was that Daphné hadn’t spoken to her mother in many years, and she probably couldn’t be trusted with a toddler anyway, so even if she wanted to get Lola— that was her sister’s name— out of the home, she didn’t know who would take care of her in Daphné’s absence. 

**Yann Cazas:**

So, my family ended up taking in and taking care of Lola while we were on tour. Apparently, I was the only one with a stable familial upbringing, and my parents were more than happy to help out. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I won’t lie, I felt really weird about it. I’m not sure why we even decided to go to Yann in the first place, but he was honestly the only option I, as weird as it was, felt comfortable about. I loved his family. And they were happy to help, so I let it happen and tried to forget about the fact that I had about six months to be ready to be a parent.

**Manon Demissy:**

Daphné was Lola’s legal guardian still, but I wasn’t tied to it in any way, so I had an out if I wanted one. I couldn’t make up my mind yet, so I didn’t mention anything to Daphné. I loved her so much, like she was my whole world, but my career and freedom meant something to me too. We were both also twenty six, which wasn’t that young to take care of a child, but younger than I’d been planning on.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Thank god my ‘secret sister’ never made it to the tabloids.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

The news about Daphné’s secret little sister settled a weird vibe over everyone, especially given the news about three more albums, so I wanted to bring everyone’s spirits back up with a new song. Sort of a follow up to “Seven Minutes in Heaven”, about how far we’d all come from that time and how we were truly a family with bonds deeper than blood. It was more fun than deep, though, because no one wanted another ballad, we wanted something to jam out to onstage. 

We actually worked with some local artists in Japan on some of the production, because we had a fair amount of shows there. The end result was sick. 

**Yann Cazas:**

He called the song “Fifteen Minutes of Fame”, which we all thought was fitting. A full circle moment that none of us registered as such until later on. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Lucas and I tinkered with that song a lot, and nothing changed on my end. Sometimes I thought Eliott knew, and in some ways I felt like I should reassure him that nothing was happening, but I decided that wasn’t up to me. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wasn’t jealous, or so I told myself. Lucas was still mine to hold and kiss and love but my insecurities came from worrying that I was holding Lucas back. All I’d ever wanted was to see him happy, and sometimes I didn’t know if I was helping that or hurting it. He never seemed sad or anything with me, but he seemed happier without me sometimes. 

**Manon Demissy:**

All of our emotions were very up and down with all the travelling we were doing. Jet lag got to the best of us, and Eliott seemed to be taking it harder than anyone. He seemed a bit distant, Lucas even told me so, but he also said he was trying not to worry about it because he knew Eliott had a tendency to feel suffocated after a while, and needed time to himself. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I thought I was giving him what he wanted, by letting him be a little more distant than usual. We still did things together, went on dates and the like, so I considered it all good.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I did need alone time, and I was grateful for Lucas for providing it for me without treating it like a burden or a task, like he was my nurse or something. But I also needed validation from Lucas that I was just overthinking, and I didn’t get it because I was too scared to ask. 

**Basile Savary:**

The last two or so months of tour were the hardest for me. Not only was I tired all the time, but I felt so inconsequential to the band that I wondered why I was even there. Yeah, they loved me and they needed a rhythm guitarist, but Lucas took some guitar melodies on some songs already anyway, and my dreams had become something entirely different than what they had been when I was eighteen.

I wanted to plan my wedding like Imane and Sofiane, spend my days with Maria like we had over the summer before we started working on  _ Polaris _ , and I wanted to think about  _ that _ future, the one with the white picket fence rather than another platinum album.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I stopped going to Baz for advice, because he seemed sort of out of it, like he didn’t want to be there or listen to me. Maybe it was because he was beyond all of us already. We were still trying to figure ourselves out, but he was set. He had a future, a plan, and that was everything to him. I barely knew what country I’d be in every day of the week.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Part of me started to wonder if it had been premature to sign for three more albums, but I quieted that thought as quickly as it had come. I had no reason to think that they would want to end something that was so good. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

The last show of the  _ Polaris _ tour was in Sydney. I loved Australia so much, I was glad we were ending there.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Daphné and I bonded over our hate for insects while we were in Australia. I’m pretty sure they were actually demons from hell, not insects. Aside from that, it was quite breathtaking.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I wouldn’t have minded living there for a few years, getting away from the LA for a little while.

**Manon Demissy:**

The last show was bittersweet, because like it or not, everything was about to change. I think we all knew that, as much as we were pretending nothing was going to change. In the back of my mind I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was the last time the eight of us would put on a show together. 

**Yann Cazas:**

We played nearly every song in our catalogue, that show was a beast. It was all worth it though, I think we all played the best we ever had. Emma looked so beautiful up there on the stage, and I saw her take in each and every moment like they were the most precious moments in her life. 

**Emma Borgès:**

That was the only time I ever cried at a show. I couldn’t help it, that entire night was perfect.

**Basile Savary:**

I played like I’d never play again. I didn’t want to say anything that night, didn’t want to ruin the magic, but after a lot of conversations I’d decided to leave the band. No one knew other than Maria, not even Arthur, and it wasn’t really even because of her. She told me that she didn’t care if I was across the world in this band forever if that was what made me happy, but that was when it clicked that it wasn’t what made me happy.

Well, it did, to an extent, but I was at my happiest with her, in our home that was way too big for us, living a perfectly boring life. It sounded crazy to people like Lucas or Daphné, but it was what I wanted. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I sang more songs solo than I ever had, and part of me fantasized about having a solo career. It was just a pipe dream, but I loved the thought of massive crowds cheering just for  _ me _ , not as a substitute for Lucas and Eliott.

I forgot there was a little girl back in the states that would soon learn to count on me for everything. Well, not entirely, but I did my best to, as awful as that sounds. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

My hearing aids were out for the entirety of that last show, like they usually were, but it didn’t make me feel like I was missing anything. The contrary, actually, I experienced so much more because I was unburdened by sound. I saw everything, from the way the moon reflected off the crowd to each face mouthing words I couldn’t hear, confetti springing in the air as we finished our final show. 

It was the end of an era, and I think we all felt it even if we didn’t want to address it. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

The moment I remember the most vividly is Lucas and I singing “Sign of the Times” together, both of us belting our hearts out like it was the last time we’d ever use our voice. Time stood still, and minutes didn’t matter anymore because we were finally infinite, and nothing mattered more in the world than that moment that transcended all space and time and nearly brought me to tears. Once the moment switched off, I felt change in the air as palpable as the bass thrumming across the stage. I think Lucas felt it too, because he looked at me for a fraction of a second, and I saw a million years fly by in those blue eyes of his. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Our encore for that show was “Seven Minutes in Heaven” instead of “People As They Are” that night. I don’t know why we changed it, but I know it was the right choice. Another moment that was lost on me at the time. I loved each and every person I shared that stage with so much that I’m pretty sure the entire audience saw it bursting out of my chest in a symphony of pure adoration. 

Just as the lights went down, I decided I didn’t care anymore, and I grabbed Eliott and kissed him like I’d never kissed anyone before. The lights went down faster than I thought, I guess, because the only people who witnessed that moment were the two of us that were a part of it. I was glad I did it though, that one time, because I had a feeling it would never happen again. 

**Imane Bakhlellal:**

They put on the perfect show, they really did. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

There was a finality to it. We all felt it, but no one addressed it. 

**Emma Borgès:**

A lot of sleeping was done once we got back home. Yann and I started looking for somewhere new to live too, because it was time to leave that small apartment behind once and for all. I was strangely attached to it, though, the thought of leaving made me want to cry a little bit sometimes.

**Yann Cazas:**

The weird thing was, after the tour, I didn’t even think of when we’d start on our next album. It wasn’t even an idle thought in my mind. That would mostly be up to Lucas and Eliott anyway, so I just decided to live my life with Emma as simply as I wanted to. Imane and Sofiane’s wedding was the only thing on the calendar for a long, long time. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I moved too, in with Alexia. She wasn’t living with Noée, though Noée was there all the time. I’d debated getting a place of my own, but I didn’t like to be lonely, and Alexia was very good at making sure I was never lonely. Camille and Mika spent a lot of time there with us too, and I liked this new little family I’d happened upon, apart from the makeshift family I already had.

**Basile Savary:**

Maria and I catapulted into wedding plans. It was new and exciting in a way that I wasn’t used to, which was exactly what I needed. The paparazzi left us alone for the most part, surprisingly, and I basked in my new reality. I still had to tell everyone I was leaving the group, but that could wait until after Imane and Sofiane’s wedding. I owed it to them to not fuck that day up.

**Manon Demissy:**

I threw myself into helping Imane with wedding things, mostly to avoid Daphné. It was a bit rude of me to do so, especially given everything she had going on, but I couldn’t deal with it. I had to evaluate whether or not I wanted that role in her life anymore. 

Idriss helped out a lot too, actually, and we got pretty close. He never judged, so I felt like I could vent to him without worrying about feeling guilty for what I said.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I totally understood what Manon was saying, all her concerns. Realistically, none of it would be solved until she talked to Daphné, but I was glad to lend an ear or advice when she wanted it. We talked a bit about my business too, roles I was taking, movies being made, the like. She had a lot of film knowledge, actually, I didn’t know where she’d been hiding it all this time.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I went back to Minnesota to figure things out with my sister. She loved Yann’s family, and I didn’t blame her, but it made it more difficult when we had to leave. She was two, she didn’t understand that these people weren’t her family and that she had to live with someone new now. I didn’t even understand why it had to be me. 

I felt so alone, more than I had in a long time. Manon was avoiding me, and I didn’t blame her, but it felt so unfair that I’d lose the love of my life for something that was out of my control. I tried not to resent Lola, because she was only a child, she’d done nothing wrong, but it was hard. 

I wasn’t the big sister parent hybrid she deserved, but I couldn’t just leave her to the wiles of the foster care system or hope that she randomly got adopted. She was my sister, and I owed it to her to try. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I spent a lot of time away from home, mostly because Daphy had Lola there now, and I didn’t know what to do with a toddler. Eliott and I were at Idriss and his place more often than not, but something seemed off between us, a wall that hadn’t been there before. I was annoyed by it, so I spent more time with the boys, mainly Arthur, because Yann was always with Emma and Baz was always with Maria. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I couldn’t shake the feeling that Lucas would grow to resent me. He’d been in love with me for the majority of his adult life, and though we don’t choose who we fall in love with, I hadn’t always handled that love with care. When things were good, they were really good, but there had been so much pain between the two of us that some part of me worried it was irrevocable. There were things Lucas would probably never forgive me for, and I didn’t think that was any way to build a life with a person.

We didn’t spend my birthday together, that year. I was twenty nine, and I was having a bad week. He tried to be there for me, but I didn’t want him to be, so he left when I asked. I could tell he was more confused than anything, but I didn’t know what to say to give him any sort of answer.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott didn’t seem to want to give any effort to our relationship anymore. I tried to plan dates and romantic things for us to do, but he was always apathetic about it. It made me fearful that what I’d been worried about was indeed coming true. Things were too good, too simple, and he was bored. Of me, or the whole situation. I thought he might leave me, so I held him tighter at night just in case. He didn’t seem to notice that I was worried in any way. 

On my birthday, I wanted nothing more than to spend the day with him doing nothing. Maybe make some music for fun, or just sit in bed and cuddle all day. Instead, the boys planned something for me, a small, not even a party-party. Eliott smiled like he was having fun the whole time, like he wanted to be there, but I could tell he didn’t. The only problem was that I didn’t know  _ what _ he wanted. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

The day of the wedding came faster than any of us had been expecting, though we should have been used to time flying by at that point. It was the happiest day of my life. I was marrying the most unbelievably amazing woman in the entire world. She was everything to me, and now we’d have our whole lives together. It was all I’d ever wanted, from the moment I first met her.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

The wedding was beautiful, and that day lives on in my heart as one of the most special days of my life. My entire family was there, as was Sofiane’s, along with the band and our friends. All the people I loved the most were in one space, and everyone was happy. It was perfect, it truly was.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

My sister looked so beautiful. I was so happy for her, and for Sofiane. My parents had been bugging me about finding someone since she’d found Sofiane, but at least they gave it a rest on the wedding day, too busy fussing over the bride and groom to be.

**Basile Savary:**

Whatever wedding Maria and I had would be beautiful and amazing, but Imane and Sofiane’s wedding was something else. You could tell, when you looked at them, that they were soulmates who’d probably found each other in every life they’d lived, and would continue to do so for eternity.

It was a day of happiness, and that was all I felt. The band even sang them a song, a little thing Lucas had written special for the two of them. It reminded me of the song he’d written for Maria and I when I proposed to her, and I made a mental note to ask if he would sing it again at our wedding.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Thank god Lola didn’t make a fuss during the wedding. I had to bring her, of course, and everyone wanted to ooh and ahh over her because people love toddlers and babies except for when they’re their own. Manon still stayed away from me, and I had to accept that maybe our relationship was a thing of the past. 

It hurt me, that she hadn’t even had the balls to break up with me, but I understood it all the same. I only hoped that things wouldn’t be awkward with the band if the two of us weren’t exactly speaking. I didn’t even know if I’d be able to be a part of the band anymore, at least not in the year and a half world tour type of capacity, because I didn’t have someone at home to take care of Lola, it was just me. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Daphné looked miserable, but like she was pretending not to be. I think I only saw the miserable part because I knew her so well. And I felt awful about it, I really did, I knew that I was a major part of why she was so miserable. I just needed time, but it seemed like the universe only sped up the clock when I just wanted a moment of pause to collect my thoughts and think about the future. 

Everything I’d thought the future would be seemed to be crumbling apart, so I was desperately trying to figure out what my new future was, what I wanted, what I needed, and how the life I was living at that moment fit into it. 

I meant to talk to Daphné, tell her where my head was at, after the wedding, but she was gone before I had the chance to. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott was still so closed off and cagey and I was just sick of it. I pulled him into the bathroom after the ceremony and told him to cut the shit and tell me what was going on, because I was beyond tired of it. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wanted to let him experience life outside of me. He’d been accommodating himself to fit into where I wanted him in my life for so long, I wanted him to have time to decide what he really wanted. Being together was great, and it was comfortable, but Lucas thrived when he was uncomfortable or faced with a challenge. If he still wanted to be with me, once he had time to figure things out, I’d be there waiting, but I didn’t want him to feel like he had to accept this love if it ended up not being what he wanted.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was angry at him for making that decision for me, but I was angrier that he was right. The past however many years of my life had been dictated by whether or not he loved me back and I didn’t want this cycle to continue forever. He said that it had nothing to do with his feelings for me, but I did wonder if this was his way of giving himself an out too, because he didn’t want me anymore either. 

And it wasn’t that I didn’t want him anymore, I think I’d just become so dependent and focused on myself as an extension of him that I’d given up a part of myself. If I wanted us to be together, for real, forever, I had to be Lucas Lallemant first and foremost, not Eliott’s boyfriend. This probably doesn’t make much sense, as I’m saying it aloud. It made more sense to me at the time, or maybe I was just pissed off and impulsive and tired of trying and trying to make something work that I was too fearful to allow to work the way it was supposed to.

**Eliott Demaury:**

We were both silent for a while, conversation ruminating in our minds. He told me that he loved me, and I said the same, and we were silent again. I second and third guessed myself, I had no idea what I was doing, proposing something like this. A break, maybe, is what I meant? I don’t even know. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I had experimented with other people before, obviously, and I didn’t know if he knew that, so it wasn’t like he was the only person I’d ever been with. He was just the one I couldn’t get out of my head. 

Neither of us knew whether that was a good or a bad thing, because neither of us knew that a healthy and loving relationship wasn’t something to be afraid of. That was really why it happened, actually. We were both too scared of things being good, because in both of our experiences the good only led to the worst, and the worst was so bad it was a hurt you never entirely came back from. We didn’t know that there was an option to make the good last forever.

So, we broke up— took a break, whatever— in the bathroom at Imane and Sofiane’s wedding. He went home to his place with Idriss, and I went home to my place with Daphné, and both of us were alone.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Lucas called me after the wedding and asked me if I still had feelings for him. I didn’t know why he was asking, so I lied and said no. Oddly, he sounded sort of disappointed. Afterward, he told me he and Eliott broke up again, and he didn’t know whether or not they’d ever reconcile what they had again, and he didn’t know if he even wanted that anymore. 

I tried not to get my hopes up, but damn was it hard not to. I invited him over to hang out and take his mind off things, and there were probably some ulterior motives.

**Lucas Lalleamnt:**

Listen, I wasn’t just all of a sudden into Arthur. Mostly, I wanted a friend, and I didn’t want it to be Manon or Daphné because they’d talk sense into me. But, I also wanted a drink, or something a little bit more, and I thought that attaching that feeling onto Arthur would be better than fucking up my life again in a way I’d promised myself and others I’d never go back to.

**Yann Cazas:**

How was I feeling, at that time? Amazing, honestly. I’d moved into a house with the woman of my dreams, and I felt like there were only good things to come. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I was feeling lost, afraid to be happy. I loved Yann, I did, I just didn’t see the same white picket fence life that he did, and I didn’t know if that meant there was something wrong with  _ me _ , or something wrong with  _ us _ .

**Manon Demissy:**

The vision I was starting to put together in my mind of what I wanted to do with my life was looking alarmingly different than what I’d planned on doing, even a month prior. I was feeling a bit scared, but also a bit free. I remembered that, at the end of the day, it was my life, and it didn’t really matter to me what other people wanted me to do, because I wasn’t a robot for them to control or a barbie for them to play with. 

I was my own person with my own autonomy over my future, and I wanted to take that future and run with it, despite what the public, or even some of my friends, might think.

**Basile Savary:**

Maria and I planned the wedding for December, around the holidays. We were so excited, and she’d agreed to have it back in Minnesota, so it could be a snowy, beautiful winter wonderland. I only hoped I could delay telling the crew I wasn’t coming back for the next album until then, because I desperately wanted them to be a part of one of the most important days of my life. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I was feeling so many different things I didn’t know how to pin them down. I was Lucas’ new Daphné, in a sense, because Daphné had Lola now and Eliott and Lucas hadn’t been seeing or speaking to one another.

I liked it, I liked it a lot. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

While I was a little bit regretful, I kept my resolve. Lucas deserved to live whatever life he wanted to live, and so did I. I got back into regular therapy again, and it helped me come to terms with the consequences of my impulsive decision to break things off with Lucas. By the time we would start working on the next album, I was sure I’d be ready to know exactly what I wanted, and I hoped Lucas would want the same.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

How was I feeling? You tell me. Too many feelings, for one thing. Imane and Sofiane were on their honeymoon, so we weren’t working, Eliott and I were on a break, so we weren’t dating, Manon was all over the place, so we weren’t talking as much, and Daphné basically had a child to take care of, so we weren’t as close as before. 

I felt like everything had changed so greatly in such a short period of time, and that had to mean something. I didn’t know what it meant yet, but it had to mean something. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

The only call I took on my honeymoon was the call that informed me that Seven Minutes in Heaven was up for a record number of Grammy nominations for the 1990 awards. I was feeling the happiest I’d ever felt in my life, utterly on top of the world.

Nothing was going to stop us now, everyone was happy as far as I’d seen before I’d left, and nothing was going to go wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u sm for reading and don't hate me <3
> 
> as always feel free to tell me ur thoughts, i'd love to discuss things !! 
> 
> as always, the original songs are on my tumblr: kieunora
> 
> and the playlist of unreleased polaris songs is here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3WFHo9RCod6bep4BL4m1kY?si=PwQ5_HZBRVKi-O51UyOe9A
> 
> wishing you all the best, hope ur staying healthy and safe <3


	9. Track 9: The Fall From Heaven - Summer 1989 to Spring 1990

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bruhh we're almost at the end 😳 
> 
> thanks to everyone who's read/commented, i really love hearing your thoughts!!
> 
> tw: mention of disordered eating

_ Having just received a record number of Grammy nominations for their work on  _ Polaris _ , Seven Minutes in Heaven’s exponential rise in the music industry and in the world of fame and fortune seemed to be aiming only higher and higher. But what happened, in the spring of 1990 to break this unstoppable group apart forever? Now, thirty years later, we find out. _

**Lucas Lallemant (lead singer, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

The months before Baz’s wedding felt like nothing happened. Daphné moved out but Manon stayed. I didn’t ask what was going on there, but I was secretly glad that Daphné and Lola moved out. I missed Daphy like a lung, I really did, but I didn’t want to deal with a two year old when I could barely deal with myself.

Eliott and I weren’t together, we weren’t even in contact at all. The difference between the last time this happened was that I knew where to find him if I needed him. We’d had one more conversation, after Sofiane and Imane’s wedding, and we’d both doubted whether or not this was the right thing to do, but we’d never know if we never tried, so we did. 

Things were lonelier around the house without Daphy and Eliott. 

**Manon Demissy (lead guitarist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

It felt like a stab straight to my heart when Daphné moved out, though I knew I was the reason why. I was never around much when she was home anyway, and we still hadn’t talked like I’d intended to after Imane and Sofiane’s wedding.

Somehow, the whole world knew too, which wasn’t very fun. Especially seeing Daphné and I’s faces plastered across tabloid covers with a jagged line between us, tearing us apart. 

They didn’t know about Lola, though, which was good. Daphné had never wanted her past to define her, and if they found out about this sister she hadn’t known she had, they’d find out about a lot more things, and suddenly she’d be someone entirely different to the world. We may not have been together, but I’d be damned if I let that happen to her.

**Daphné Lecomte (background vocalist and percussionist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I’d lost Manon, I’d lost my life with Lucas, I’d lost touring, and I’d lost making music at all, at least for the moment. But I’d gained a sister, and if she was all I had left, I would be the best pseudo mother she could ever have asked for.

Perk of being a known lesbian: when people saw you with a toddler, they never assumed it was yours. That’s probably the only reason I was able to keep Lola away from the spotlight for a while. They never connected the random toddler I was with every now and again to anything substantial.

**Yann Cazas (bassist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I helped Baz with some of his wedding planning, and talked to him about proposing to Emma. I wanted to, and I thought it was high time to fully commit, but I was still nervous about it. I didn’t think she’d say no, but what if she did? 

Lucas and Eliott had broken up, and so had Manon and Daphné. I was starting to lose faith in love that lasted, because if they couldn’t make it, who was to say that we would?

**Emma Borgès (keyboardist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

Yann hung out with Baz a lot, and Maria and I had never been close like that, so Manon and I got closer again. We went in and out of best friendship. Like, we always knew we were there for one another, but sometimes we were inseparable and sometimes it was just a quiet sort of support from the sidelines. 

She was miserable about Daphné, and I did my best to take her mind off it. I’m not sure it helped much. I was trying to take my own mind off things, just a bit. Things with Yann were too good, and I hadn’t told him or anyone about Alex. I hadn’t cheated, but it was still a thing that had happened. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Emma was a great person to have by my side through it all. She helped me put things in perspective sometimes, and even helped me forget about them other times. I’m not sure if she was spending time with Daphné too or not, but I never asked because I wanted to know  _ too _ much.

**Imane Bakhellal (manager, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I was on my honeymoon, minding my own business for a change. I didn’t know what kind of shitshow I’d be coming back to, because when I left everyone was right as rain. That should have taught me to never underestimate their chaos. 

**Sofiane Alaoui (manager, Eliott Demaury):**

Eliott had told me that he and Lucas were taking a break, the only reason I hadn’t told Imane was because I was sure they’d be back together by the time we got back. They always found their way back, and no one was standing in the way this time. I didn’t even know the details of the break, because I’d obviously been preoccupied with other thoughts.

**Idriss Bakhellal (actor,** **_Life is Now_ ** **):**

I was Eliott’s Lucas stand in for the most part. It was endearing for maybe the first three days, then it was just annoying. None of us knew why they’d even broken up in the first place, it was obvious they still wanted to be together. 

**Eliott Demaury (singer,** **_Le Premier_ ** **and** **_Polaris_ ** **):**

I tried to channel a lot of my feelings into songwriting, but I felt stuck without Lucas. That was good in some ways, because it reminded me of why I’d suggested this whole thing. Everything I did was tied so intrinsically with Lucas that it was hard to feel like I was one hundred percent me, and I knew he felt the same even if he’d never say it. 

The further I distanced from music, the more I wondered if it was even the right place for me to be. I loved performing, writing, all of it, but I loved other things too. I’d sort of fallen into the music industry, but maybe this break was time to try something new. 

**Alexia Martineau (producer,** **_Fifteen Minutes of Fame_ ** **,** **_Le Premier_ ** **,** **_Minute by Minute_ ** **, and** **_Polaris_ ** **):**

I saw Lucas quite often at my place, but I didn’t tell him about all the time I was spending with Eliott. I was the self proclaimed queen of hobbies, and Eliott was in the market for a new hobby, so he’d come to me. An excellent choice, if I do say so myself. 

One thing we learned right off the bat was that Eliott was a  _ horrible _ dancer. Maybe he was a fucking ballerina in another life or somehting, but in this one… yikes.

**Arthur Broussard (drummer, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

Lucas was spending more and more time with me, and I thought that maybe it meant something. I never bridged that gap myself, because I’d learned my lesson the first time. If something happened, he’d have to make the first move. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Spending time with Arthur was easy. Part of me wondered if it was because I liked him, and wondered further if I wanted to pursue that. I never felt with Eliott how I felt with Arthur, because they were two entirely different people with historically different roles in my life. 

It was too early to decide whether that was a good sign or a bad sign.

**Basile Savary (rhythm guitarist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I was just chillin’. Wedding plans were fun and, for the most part, easy, I was just excited for the day to finally come. I waited to have my bachelor party until Sofiane got back from his honeymoon, because I wanted to invite him, but the rest of the guest list was a little iffy. I was great friends with both Eliott and Lucas, I couldn’t just choose one of them to bring along. On that same note, would I invite the girls or not? I wanted Daph Bean to be there, but would it be rude to invite just her, and not Manon or Emma? It might be for the best, because of the way things had gone with Manon and Daphné, but they were some tough decisions.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I headed Baz off and told him I wouldn’t be offended if he didn’t invite me to the bachelor party. Of course I’d be at the wedding, because I considered him a great friend of mine, but he and Lucas had been friends longer, and I didn’t want to create any unwanted tension. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I told Baz I couldn’t come to his bachelor party because I was worried about the substances present. That was partially true. He wanted to have it at the Sun, for old time’s sake, but I didn’t know if I’d be able to do it, with Eliott there too, especially back at the place where things had first begun.

**Basile Savary:**

So, uh, yeah, that was two people out of the way. Even though I wanted them both to be there. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Baz asked me to go to his bachelor’s party and my heart nearly cracked open, I wanted to go so badly. But then I’d have to find a sitter, and I was worried Lola was already developing some attachment issues, and on top of it I thought she might have had a cold or something. I couldn’t afford a night out, as much as I wanted one. It was also nearing her birthday, apparently, which I didn’t find out until I got her birth certificate in the mail. I probably should have guessed that she was a scorpio. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I wasn’t invited to the party. Baz’s or Maria’s. I wasn’t surprised about Maria’s, we’d hardly ever had a full conversation with one another, but I had been expecting Baz to invite me. It meant one of two things. One, he wanted Daphné to go, and she wouldn’t if I was there, or two, he was being a sexist jerk about it, and only inviting men. 

I knew Baz well enough to know that it was likely the first option, and that he was beating himself up about not inviting me.

**Emma Borgès:**

I got the invite to Baz’s party, and I hadn’t partied in quite some time, so it was just what the doctor ordered.

**Yann Cazas:**

Of course I was going to Baz’s bachelor party. I assumed everyone else would be there too, of course, but I would have gone even if I was the only guest. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I knew Lucas and Eliott both weren’t going, and selfishly I wanted to be with Lucas just in case that was the night he decided he loved me, but I’d have been an awful friend if I did that. Baz meant more to me than the off chance that Lucas Lallemant might want to kiss me back.

**Manon Demissy:**

Before all the bachelor party nonsense, of course, was Imane’s big news. The only call I received from her while she was gone was the one telling me all the Grammy awards we were nominated for. Lucas and I nearly shit our pants on the spot, and I even forgot for a minute that I didn’t know how much longer I wanted to be doing this exact line of work.

I didn’t even think about the fact that we might win, it was just such a shock to be nominated at all. We hadn’t been for  _ Fifteen Minutes of Fame _ , which made sense, as a debut, but people had been shocked when we hadn’t been nominated at all for  _ Minute by Minute _ . Imane had been shocked most of all. I tried not to care about that sort of thing, and I did really good at it until we got nominated. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I’m still not sure, to this day, whether or not Charles had something to do with  _ Minute by Minute _ — both the song and the album— getting snubbed at the Grammys. I didn’t think he’d stoop that low, because if we won it would be great for the label, but I was never sure. Alexia wasn’t even nominated as a producer for either of those projects, which was such bullshit. She was clearly the best in the business at that point in time.

**Alexia Martineau:**

I wasn’t upset about the nominations I hadn’t received, I was just happy about the one I  _ did _ receive. It was exciting to be recognized for such an iconic body of work. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

The person I wanted to share that excitement with was Eliott. But, that was a no-no, so I shared it with Manon instead, because she still lived with me and was in as much of a daze most of the time that I was.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I drove all the way to Lucas’ place after Imane called me before I remembered that we weren’t together at the moment. It slipped my mind like that sometimes, and I wondered if this was how he’d felt the entire time I’d been with Lucille. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

It felt really bittersweet to me. I knew, realistically, that the Grammys were one night, and I’d be able to find someone to babysit Lola for me that one night, but hearing the nomination news got me thinking about the next album, and thinking about the next album had me wondering yet again if I’d be able to be a part of it. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I was riding the high of the Grammy nominations into Baz’s party. I was kind of surprised to see that it was only Arthur, Emma, Sofiane, Idriss, Baz, and I. Sofiane had only just gotten back from his honeymoon and he looked like he didn’t really want to be there. I was honestly shocked to see Idriss there at all, I’d always thought he only tolerated Baz because of Eliott. The lack of presence from Eliott, Lucas, Manon, and Daphné was palpable, and it had me second guessing the band’s future, just a bit.

**Emma Borgès:**

I felt bad for doing so, but I left the party pretty early. I loved hanging out with everyone, but I felt like I shouldn’t be there. Baz and I had never been close in the way he was with some of the others, and he was even closer with Daphné than with me, so I felt a bit weird being the one of the girls who’d shown up. They probably had a better night after I left anyway. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I wanted to leave early too. It wasn’t the same without Lucas there, and we all felt it. 

**Basile Savary:**

I had sort of wished Lucas and Eliott, at least, would have gotten over their issues long enough to surprise me at the party, but I should have known better. It left a dull sort of energy over the night, because I could tell no one really wanted to be there. It wasn’t even like anyone had anything better to be doing anyway, they just didn’t want to be there celebrating with me.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Eliott had sent me in his stead, because he wanted to know how Lucas was doing without actually talking to him, but obviously Lucas wasn’t there. I had a feeling Lucas wasn’t there for the same reason Eliott wasn’t, and I just sighed to myself at the idiocy that ran abound between those two. 

**Maria Savary (nurse; wife, Basile Savary):**

It was pretty shitty for some of Baz’s closest friends to abandon him like that. He pretended it didn’t bother him but I knew him well enough to know better. I get that they all had things going on in their lives, but they really couldn’t put that drama aside for one night? Daphné was the only one I didn’t blame, because I couldn’t even imagine what she was going through at the moment. 

**Basile Savary:**

Maria thought I should have been mad at Eliott and Lucas, but I couldn’t be. If Maria and I broke up and then a few months later were invited to the same party I probably would have ditched it too. Their world didn’t need to revolve around me.

**Maria Savary:**

He would always say that he didn’t expect their worlds to revolve around him, but I wondered, then, why they expected his world to revolve around theirs. Lucas especially. I liked Lucas, I did, but in all the time I’ve known him it was ‘the world according to Lucas Lallemant’ and everyone else just followed that doctrine blindly. It was bullshit. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I never asked anyone to treat me like I was the sun, but I did let it happen. I never thought of myself that way, so it was hard for me to see why anyone else would. There was only one sunshine boy, and he was better than me in every way imaginable. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Sofiane told me how weird the vibe had been at Basile’s party. I assumed it was just because Lucas and Eliott broke up, but he told me they weren’t even there. That was when I felt a touch of worry, because if  _ they _ weren’t the problem, what  _ was _ the problem?

Lucas even called me, asking when we’d start working on album four, and I didn’t have an answer for him. I said to wait until Basile’s wedding had come to pass, so we would hopefully have everyone’s full attention. Maybe we could leak info that we were starting a new album around the Grammys time to get more publicity for that. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I’d called Imane to ask about our next album, not because I was anxious to start, but because I  _ wasn’t _ , and I needed to know if I would have to find some sort of inspiration somewhere. I didn’t even want to write heartbreak songs, because my heart wasn’t broken or anything, it was just… there. 

I needed to feel something, to know if what I felt for Eliott was stronger. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wanted to get started on the next album right away, but Sofiane said we would be waiting until after Baz’s wedding. That made sense, especially because I don’t think anyone else was in the music making state of mind, but I knew it was my only excuse to see Lucas, so I desperately wanted to start the process. 

I regretted suggesting a break every single day, but I stuck by my decision. There was so much of the world outside the two of us, and while we’d seen a lot of it, most things had been tainted by the good and the bad. I didn’t want either of our lives to be ruled by times when we were or weren’t talking. I just wanted us to fit into a grander design more naturally, you know? Maybe you don’t, I’m talking out of my ass at this point, aren’t I?

**Manon Demissy:**

The house was so quiet without Daphné and Eliott. I hated it. I still talked to Eliott often enough, because I’d been friends with him before and he and Lucas breaking up wasn’t going to change that, just like I knew Lucas still talked to Daphné. 

He told me how much he missed Lucas, and I understood perfectly, because I was feeling the same about Daphné. The difference in the matter was that I’d fucked up irrevocably in how I’d handled the end of our relationship. Eliott knew this, but he spoke of it more gently, let me know that he thought I should talk to Daphné, let her know that I just needed time. 

He was right, but it wasn’t that easy for me. I still loved her so much, and I know I would have been with her still if Lola wasn’t in the picture. I didn’t even know if it mattered, that Daphné had to care for Lola now, that's what I needed more time to figure out, but it was hard to take the right amount of time when Daphné had a commitment to this abandoned sister of hers immediately. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I wasn’t handling anything very well. Lola had turned three in November, I found that out when I received her birth certificate in the mail. She hated me. Or maybe she just hated the world. It was hard to tell with her.

It didn’t help anything that I barely knew how to be a parent or guardian figure. I obviously hadn’t had the best role models, but I suppose I’d turned out better than expected, so I could only hope for the same for Lola. 

Lucas didn’t keep in touch as much as he said he would, which was both expected and unexpected. I knew he was dealing with his own shit, as per usual, but we’d always been there for each other in some of our toughest moments, and this was a really big one for me. I knew he didn’t want to get roped into being a dad, or whatever, but he could have just lent an ear every now and again.

The irony that this had almost been him back during our first tour wasn’t lost on me. Back in those days, I probably would have been itching to take over his role in the band, so I wouldn’t have cared if we lost him to a wife and a baby, but it would have been an entirely different story even a year later.

I was also doing my best not to think of Manon. I asked Lucas how she was, sometimes, when we spoke, just to get a gauge on if our lack of relationship was affecting her at all the way it was me. I loved her, but I was also pissed off at her. Did she really think I’d chosen this? And that I hadn’t wanted her to be a part of my life, even as it was changing so much?

The only real reprieve I found was in music, so I wrote and wrote and wrote, even if I knew most of the songs would never see the light of day. 

**Basile Savary:**

Finally, it was my wedding day. The venue was beautiful, as were all the decorations. I was glad to have been a part of the planning, even if it was mostly Maria’s vision. I didn’t care what it all looked like, truthfully, as long as she loved it.

We took a gamble, having our wedding on New Year’s Eve, but we thought it would be a good way to ring in each new year, with our wedding anniversary. There was also likely to be scheduling conflicts with some people on our guest list, but as long as the whole band made it, I was fine. I didn’t need my great aunt Audra who I’d met once when I was a child there, if she couldn’t make it. 

We refused all journalists, but we did hire Alex Delano to be our official photographer and promised Noée a story on the whole affair after the fact. The public was way more invested than I’d expected them to be. It wasn’t like I was Lucas, or something. 

**Emma Borgès:**

The increased attention on Baz’s relationship also affected Yann and I. The media more or less knew that Daphné and Manon were over, so that only left Yann and I for them to scrutinize and speculate about. Everything we did was either going to lead to a breakup or proposal, depending on who you asked. I knew Yann never paid attention to that sort of thing, but it kind of stressed me out.

**Arthur Broussard:**

The wedding was the first time Lucas and Eliott would be seeing each other since Imane and Sofiane’s wedding. Which was awesome, for my own mental state. I couldn’t think about it too much, though, because I was Baz’s best man, and I wanted to make sure that he had the day he deserved. Which is to say, the best day possible. 

**Maria Savary:**

I had butterflies in my stomach all day, but it was all worth it to see Basile at the end of the aisle, waiting to spend the rest of our lives together. I’ve been in love with him for a long time, but that day is still as special to me now as it was then. 

Thank god his dramatic ass bandmates didn’t make a scene. At least, not to my knowledge.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I knew that they were all technically grown up, and I wasn’t even much older than they were, but the wedding was the first time that I realized that they weren’t the confused and hopeful eighteen year olds I’d met one fateful night at a bar I hadn’t even wanted to be at.

It was a bit jarring to me, and it put a lot of other things into perspective. I told Sofiane afterwards that I didn’t know if we’d get three more albums out of them, and he tried to reassure me that I was just overthinking things, but I had a sinking feeling that I wasn’t.

I stuck by what Sofiane said, though, and tried to ignore it. The ironic thing is that we might have actually gotten those three albums had I just spoken to them all about it instead of leaving things to fate.

**Basile Savary:**

I cried so much, but I was proud to do so. Maria was the most phenomenal woman I’d ever met, and I knew a whole lot of phenomenal women. She looked gorgeous and I almost had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

Truly one of the greatest moments— and days— of my life. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott was there. I almost wished he’d also been a groomsman, because then I wouldn’t have to look at him the whole time because I couldn’t keep my eyes away. He didn’t look at me once, which I thought was for the best. He had better resolve than I did.

**Basile Savary:**

I only asked Arthur, Yann, and Lucas to be my groomsmen. I talked to Eliott about it, and he assured me there were no hard feelings. We were fairly close, but the other three had been like brothers to me since high school. There was just an extra layer there.

_ (Basile laughs) _

At the reception, after Lucas sang the song he’d written for us, he did a ‘check the gang’, but instead of running away they all obliged me a long overdue high five. I think I cried then too.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas looked so beautiful, and so happy. He, Arthur, and Yann spent most of the night on the dance floor being absolute idiots, but the smile he wore was one of unadulterated joy. I envied it, but I was glad he had it. 

I danced with Manon a bit, but it was obvious her mind was elsewhere. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Daphné was there, as I’d expected her to be, and Lola was with Yann’s sister for the night since she didn’t know Baz super well and didn’t feel like going to the wedding. Daphné looked radiant as usual, but something was off, like the light that so often filled her inside and out had been blockaded. 

She also looked skinnier than usual, and I knew what that meant well enough to worry about it. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

It hadn’t been a conscious decision on my part, actually, losing weight again. It could still be attributed to those disordered eating patterns I hadn’t entirely managed to shake, but I hadn’t been trying to look a certain way or anything. I just felt like my life was spiraling so much I had to find some sort of control. As unhealthy as it was, I felt like what I was doing helped, so I kept doing it. 

It didn’t help that Idriss and Manon were flirting with one another all night. I don’t think she looked my way once. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Manon kept asking me all these questions about the film industry, she had been for quite some time. I didn’t know why she was asking, but I obliged her because Manon was always nice to talk to. 

Daphné was staring daggers at me all night, and I probably should have told her I wasn’t trying to get with her girl, but it was kind of funny to fuel her fire. I love Daphné, I do, but she got on my nerves more than the others, so I didn’t mind letting her read into things that weren’t there. Sounds kind of mean, but I’m sure she would have done the same to me.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Lucas disappeared at some point during the night, and I was sure he’d gone off with Eliott, but Eliott looked just as confused by his absence as I did. I knew he was moments from running off to find him, so I took the initiative and sought him out myself. My best man duties were done, and Baz only had Maria on his mind, so they wouldn’t even notice I was gone. 

I found him at the hotel bar.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I wanted a drink. I really did. Ordered one, too. Arthur showed up just as my resolve was thinning, not a moment too soon. 

There had been no catalyst to this moment, but there didn’t really need to be. Seeing Eliott had me a bit on edge, just because there were so many feelings attached to the two of us, and Basile’s wedding had reminded me that it was something I’d probably never be able to have. I mean, being gay was still considered a mental illness at that point. 

When Arthur showed up, I lost all my impulse control and traded one bad habit for another.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I hadn’t seen Lucas drink in a really long time. I knew that it was somewhat of a problem for him, that was why he stopped, but I didn’t know any details. He didn’t drink his drink, though, he just stared at it until I sat beside him. 

I registered the exact moment he decided to do what he did, it was clear as day in those bright blue eyes of his. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I asked him to come to my room with me. He asked why, and I told him that he knew why. It might have been an impulsive decision, but it wasn’t a whim. I wasn’t exploiting the fact that Arthur had feelings for me, I was just trying to do something I wanted to do because I wanted to do it. I won’t say it never crossed my mind, him and I. I figured there was no time like the present to see what, exactly that would lead to.

**Arthur Broussard:**

There wasn’t a single universe I would have said no in, even if there should have been. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I noted that Lucas and Arthur were both gone, and I noted that they both looked a little unkempt in the morning. I wouldn’t talk to Lucas about it if he didn’t want to, but I didn’t see the harm in noting an observation.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

This is going to sound bad, but I hadn’t expected Arthur to know what he was doing the way that he did. I knew he had a very active sex life, but I didn’t know if that had ever included other men. After that night, though, I went out on a limb and guessed that it had.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I don’t need to go into detials of the sex I had with Lucas in 1989— or 1990, depending on what time it was that night— but yes, it happened.

**Yann Cazas:**

Emma was acting a little weird all night, maybe because she’d been reading all those things magazines were saying about us. I hadn’t intended on proposing any time soon, but the thought  _ had _ crossed my mind. I wouldn’t have minded spending my life with her. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I was acting cagey, I know, but it was mostly because Alex was there. I hadn’t told anyone about  _ it _ , but I didn’t know if he had, and so I tried to keep him and Yann as far apart as possible. 

**Alexandre Delano (photographer):**

I was down if Emma wanted to fuck again, but I knew she was dating Yann for real now, so it wasn’t like I was going to say anything about it. If she wanted it, she could come to me. If not, I could find anyone else at that wedding to have some fun with.

**Emma Borgès:**

Eventually, I brought Yann upstairs to fuck because the party was basically over anyway and most everyone else had left already. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I asked if she had anything she needed to talk about, because she had a habit of using sex to get out of talking about things, but she asssured me a million times over she was fine, just horny. In all honesty I was too, so we had a good time.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I left with some girl from Maria’s wedding party. She’d been giving me eyes all night, and I didn’t know if it was because I was famous or because she wanted to fuck me. Turned out it was both, so that we did. 

I’d assumed Manon would be doing the same with Idriss. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I won’t lie, the thought of doing something with Idriss crossed my mind, but I just couldn’t. I was still so in love with Daphné it would have been unfair to him. I saw Daphné leave with one of Maria’s bridesmaids, though, and it hurt just as she’d probably intended it to. I deserved to feel that pain, though, I was the bitch who’d all but abandoned her. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

The Grammys were at the beginning of March, so we had roughly two full months until then after the wedding. Basile went on his honeymoon, but that shouldn’t have disrupted any sort of songwriting process, so I gave them the go ahead to start working on album four. They also had to prepare a performance for the Grammys, but that could wait until Basile got back.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

The one time thing with Arthur turned out to be more than a one time thing. Each time I would insist to myself that it was the last, but it felt so good to be reckless that I kept going back for more.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I thought that he might have been falling for me too. Lucas had never been one to half ass his feelings, and if he kept coming back to me it had to mean  _ something _ . 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I tried to find a way to broach songwriting without it feeling awkward or forced. I decided calling was better than showing up unannounced, so I went that route.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I picked up the phone when Eliott called. He was the last person I’d expected it to be, but I felt surprisingly comforted to hear his voice. I feel like that should have set off something in my mind, but it didn’t. Instead, I just asked why he was calling.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I asked if he wanted to start writing and he said no. Part of me had been expecting that, but it still hurt when he said it.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I had to explain that it wasn’t because of  _ him _ , it was mostly because I didn’t have anything to write about. I felt like all my brain power had been used up. I debated writing about whatever I had going on with Arthur, but that didn’t feel right either. The feelings I’d attached to that situation weren’t the type I wanted to write a song about. 

I knew Imane was counting on us though, so I told him he could go ahead and get started without me until I found inspiration.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Like hell was I going to start without him.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I started listening to all our old albums, day and night, trying to find that spark I’d been missing. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Lucas was always playing our music, whether it be spinning quietly or loudly on our record player, or through the headphones he’d attached to his walkman. I could tell he was bothered, though I didn’t know if it had to do with music or his personal life. I didn’t know which option was worse. 

I told him to take a break, if it had something to do with music, because he couldn’t force inspiration. He just looked at me like I was crazy for suggesting it. 

Admittedly, I suggested taking a break for a selfish reason. I didn’t want to get back into music just yet. I wanted to be able to decide if I even wanted to continue to make music the way we had for the last ten or so years. Music had its place in my heart, and there it would be forever, but I wasn’t sure if the whole band thing was what I still wanted going forward. I liked performing, but the parts of performance I liked the best were making the music videos.

That was why I’d been talking to Idriss a lot, about his career. I felt strange even considering it, but part of me wondered what it would be like to branch out into acting full time instead of being a part of the band. They wouldn’t miss me, not really. Baz could just take over lead guitar and Lucas could take over rhythm, because he was basically doing that already. It would make things easier for Daphné if I was gone, too. 

I didn’t want to say anything to anyone, though, because I still wasn’t sure, and if they really needed me, that was where my obligation was. I wouldn’t leave them hanging. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

“Can I Call You Tonight” from  _ Minute by Minute _ really hit different. In a sense, I felt some of the same emotions that I’d felt while I wrote that song, but I was feeling them in a different sort of way. I  _ was _ trying to make up my mind about how I felt, and I wanted to talk to Eliott about it. I completely understood the space he was giving me, and I appreciated it, but even if we didn’t end up together, we’d still be working together, so it didn’t make sense to avoid one another. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Lucas and I hadn’t talked about what we were doing, but it was a regular occurrence. Sometimes I wondered if Manon had caught on to it, because Lucas wasn’t making any effort to hide it, but she also seemed a bit preoccupied with her own shit, so I was never sure. 

He didn’t seem to be a huge fan of intimacy, there were times he’d shy away from kisses or squirm when I told him he was beautiful. I didn’t know if it had been like that with everyone he’d been with, or if it was just like that with me. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It felt weird to talk like that with Arthur, unnatural. I could tell he wanted me to say the sorts of things that he did, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t fake things I wasn’t feeling. Like, yeah, objectively he was beautiful, but I couldn’t muster up the voice to say it when we were having sex, because it felt like crossing a line I didn’t want to cross. 

I stopped staying over at his place at night, and he stopped staying at mine. I hadn’t told him he couldn’t, but I guess he sort of understood some of the things I wasn’t saying.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Being some sort of rebound honestly never crossed my mind. It probably should have, but I hadn’t been privy to every detail of Lucas and Eliott’s relationship, I’d only seen how they acted around everyone else. Around everyone, they were never very in your face about their relationship, even when the subtext was written all over them. I just assumed Lucas liked to keep things more private, and I was fine with it. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I called Eliott late one night, just to talk about some of the things going on in my mind. Even if we weren’t together, he helped me piece those things together like no one’s business. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I’d been sitting by the phone for some reason, like I’d been expecting a call. I wasn’t, obviously, but somehow I knew exactly who it was when I picked up the phone. His voice sounded so warm over the phone, and it felt so good to hear it that I forgot we weren’t really talking at the moment.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Before he could even say anything, I told him that I was sick of the silence. We didn’t have to jump right back into what we’d had, but since we’d need to work together on the next album, we couldn’t go back to being strangers.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I agreed with him. I asked if, as friends, he wanted to drive around and talk through some ideas. I’d had a couple song scribbles, but nothing concrete.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It was one in the morning, but I said yes. Maybe I could write a song about it. Besides, we all knew I wouldn’t be sleeping much anyway.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I was worried about it being awkward, but being with Lucas was never awkward. When he got into the car, “People As They Are” started playing on the radio and we both burst into laughter. It was hard to find radio stations that didn’t play our music, which I suppose was a good problem to have.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Have you seen those ‘Carpool Karaoke’ segments on tv? With that talk show host?

_ (Lucas pauses) _

Oh, apparently “everyone knows those, don’t be such a boomer”. Good to know. Anyway, that’s kind of what we did, but in a more informal way, you know? 

There was so much good music during that time, and I kept up with as much of it as I could. I got inspired by other artists as well, Queen was one of my favorite bands during that period, I was devastated when Freddie died. I’d only met him a handful of times but yeah, he was about as incredible as you’ve heard your whole life. 

The point is, I knew a lot of music, aside from ours, and Eliott did too, so we just drove around until the sun came up, singing along with each song that came on the radio. We heard ourselves a good twenty or so times, which was always surreal but I’d come to expect it. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Once the sun came up, I dropped him off and we went back to our separate lives but he thanked me right before he got out of the car. I told him I’d be there anytime he wanted me to be and he gave me one of my favorite types of his smiles. The kind that he didn’t even mean to share, like he thought he was hiding it well or something. The smile I’d fallen in love with a handful of times at this point.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Arthur called me to hang out that day, but I ignored his call. I felt bad about it, a little bit, but he couldn’t expect us to like, spend every day together or whatever. 

Even though it was roughly six in the morning, I fell right into bed and slept better than I had in a long time. The only problem with that was that I was wide awake at night when I  _ should _ have been sleeping. 

So, I called Eliott.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Sometimes we’d talk on the phone, sometimes we’d drive around, sometimes I would take him places I’d always wanted to take him to. There wasn’t anything romantic about it, but it felt good to be in the presence of someone I felt so comfortable around. Eventually we started going places during the daytime, because both of our sleep schedules were completely fucked and Baz was getting back from his honeymoon so we’d have to start rehearsing for the Grammys. 

**Basile Savary:**

I called Imane when I got back from my honeymoon, because I knew she was the first person I had to run it by, and I told her I was leaving the band.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I understood that he’d probably just had a great little vacation with Maria, and that going back to work was the last thing on his mind, but I begged him to hold off on deciding anything until after the Grammys.

**Basile Savary:**

My mind was pretty much made up, but I granted her that. The last thing I wanted was to cause anyone any stress, especially since we’d been relatively stress free as a band for a little while. Should have known not to get too comfortable.

**Emma Borgès:**

I went to Lucas and Manon’s with the intention of talking to Manon, but she wasn’t there. She was with Idriss, for some reason. I’d seen them together at Baz’s wedding too. I didn’t know what that meant, but I wondered if Daphné knew about it. I decided not to be the one to tell her, because she had enough on her plate, but I hoped Manon would extend that courtesy if anything happened between her and Idriss. 

Lucas was there, though, and even though we hadn’t really had very many deep level conversations since the Fifteen Minutes tour, I still trusted him implicitly. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Emma pretended she’d come over to talk to me, which I found kind of funny. Obviously she was there for Manon. Regardless, I welcomed her in and told her that she could talk to me, if she wanted. Surprisingly, she took me up on the offer.

**Emma Borgès:**

I sort of spilled everything in rapid succession. Yann had been the only person I’d been talking to much as of late, and he was the only person I couldn’t tell any of these things to. I told him that I was worried about Yann proposing, because I wasn’t sure I was ready to settle down with one person forever, even if I did love him, and I told him about Alex, because it had been weighing on me even if I hadn’t really done anything wrong. 

He was a great listener, actually. Just the right amount of comforting words shared and those wide blue eyes anyone would tell their deepest secrets to. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Everything she said surprised me. I’d thought her relationship with Yann was rock solid. She didn’t know that I knew just how long it had been going on, but it did raise my eyebrows a bit that she’d been with Alex while fucking Yann as ‘friends’. I also didn’t really buy her fear of settling down, because she’d only been with one guy— other than her two moments with Alex— for quite some time, but I also didn’t know how to say that to her.

**Emma Borgès:**

Once I got it all out, I begged him not to tell Yann. Maybe I should have been upfront about it all, and I would for sure have to talk about marriage and whatnot with him at some point, but I didn’t want or need him to know about Alex, because I had a feeling he’d overreact. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Yann was my bro, I wanted to tell him, but Emma made me promise I wouldn’t, so I didn’t. She didn’t say anything about anyone else, though, so I may have let a little something slip to Arthur one day.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Lucas seemed more out of it than usual, like his mind was a million miles away, and I just wanted him to let me in on what was going on inside it. He told me about Emma and Alex, what she’d told him about before Yann and Emma had started dating. He didn’t seem too concerned about it, and I assumed that was because he didn’t know Yann and Emma had technically been seeing each other for much longer than when they’d told us.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t know if Arthur knew about their friends with benefits thing, so that was why I said it happened before they got together. It was technically true. That way I figured there wasn’t any harm in saying something. I did tell him not to tell Yann though, because it wasn’t his story to tell.

**Arthur Broussard:**

After he dropped that bomb on me, I was unceremoniously kicked out. He didn’t even notice that I hadn’t left yet when he picked up the phone with this wide, stupid grin on his face. I didn’t stick around to see who he was calling, but I felt a hurt in my chest that he never looked at me like that. The smiles he gave me were surface level, friendly, but not full of love and warmth like I’d just seen on his face. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

We started rehearsals a week after Baz got back from his honeymoon, and I could immediately sense something was off. And it wasn’t just that I’d had to bring Lola, so she was currently off playing with Sofiane somewhere. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Lola didn’t like many people, but she liked me. I took great pride in that.

**Yann Cazas:**

Emma and I had gotten into a huge fight and I barely wanted to talk to her. Or see her, even. Arthur told me that she’d been with Alex while we were together, and considering the fact that she’d never brought it up, she never intended to. Here I was, thinking she was the person I was meant to spend my life with, and she was looking elsewhere.

**Emma Borgès:**

Lucas was the only person I’d told. Now, somehow, Yann knew. He feigned innocence when I called him out one on one during rehearsal break, but I could see in his eyes that he knew exactly what I was talking about. I hated him for it.

Because clearly, from whatever he’d said to Yann, Yann thought I’d cheated on him, which I hadn’t done. Yann wouldn’t listen to a word I said, though, so my side of the story went unshared. Yann went to stay with Lucas and Manon for a little bit, which all but confirmed my suspicions that Lucas had been the one to tell him. 

I wanted nothing more to do with him, but I knew the Grammy performance was important, so I stuck that out for  _ myself _ . I wasn’t going to go down in flames because Lucas was a snake.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I kept my word, I didn’t tell Yann. But Emma was so angry and I knew I’d never convince her otherwise, so I stopped trying. It was my fault, in a way, for telling Arthur, but in my defense, I’d made him promise not to say anything and I’d made sure to emphasize that Yann and Emma hadn’t been together when she slept with Alex. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I didn’t know what was going on, just that Yann was staying with us for a little while, or maybe a long while, depending on whether or not he ever decided to talk to Emma again.

**Yann Cazas:**

I just felt so blindsided. I trusted Emma with everything I had in me, but she hadn’t offered me the same consideration. Was she keeping her options open? Or did she just not love me enough to share all of herself with me? I was mad about Alex, a little bit, but that wasn’t why I was so pissed off. She could tell this stuff to Arthur, of all people, but not me? I knew they were fairly close, but she’d told him not to tell me, like it was some sort of secret. 

I didn’t know why she wasn’t mad at  _ him _ for betraying her trust.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I knew that I should have stayed out of it, that I shouldn’t have said anything, but I was annoyed with Lucas for not loving me the way I wanted him to, and I thought that Yann should know that the same was true of Emma.

**Emma Borgès:**

I  _ did _ love Yann. And I didn’t owe him explanations I wasn’t ready to share. At least, that was what I thought at the time. 

**Basile Savary:**

Oh, how naive I’d been to think that we’d left the drama behind us after the  _ Polaris _ era. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I’d bought a ring, actually. I didn’t have a solid proposal plan, but it had been my intention to pop the question sometime within the next six months or so, whenever I worked up the nerve. That plan was now down the garbage. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Manon, Daphné, Basile, and I were way out of the loop, so we tried to discuss what song we wanted to perform while Yann and Emma refused to speak, and Lucas and Arthur both looked guilty. I didn’t know which one of them  _ was _ guilty, but they both seemed to think that  _ something _ was their fault. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

It was the first time in months that I’d so much as spoken adjacent to Manon. I wasn’t really in the mood to make any sort of amends with her, but we didn’t need any more fighting, so I’d be civil and professional if necessary.

**Manon Demissy:**

Daphné wasn’t talking  _ to _ me, but she was talking  _ near _ me, and I took that as a win. I wanted to talk to her desperately, about what I’d been discussing with Idriss, and some of the future plans I’d hesitantly began to consider, but I knew that wasn’t fair of me when I’d hardly stopped to consider what she wanted her own future to look like.

Since Yann was at our place nearly twenty four seven now, I decided to spend some time with Emma at her place and see if I could get any answers and see how she was holding up.

**Emma Borgès:**

I was sick to my stomach all the time, and I didn’t know why I was having that kind of reaction to the situation. Manon was a big help though, she let me talk through things with her and we’d fall asleep laying together in bed after talking about things we felt like we couldn’t talk about with anyone else. 

I could see how much she still wanted to be with Daphné and I didn’t know what was holding her back.

**Manon Demissy:**

Emma was taking things both easier and harder than it looked from the surface. She said she’d caught some sort of stomach bug, but it lasted longer than a usual bug so I assumed it was all the stress she was probably feeling. Other than that, she said that she was mad Yann wouldn’t listen to her, but if he wouldn’t, maybe they weren’t right for each other anyway. I didn’t really know what advice she needed, so I tried to be there for her instead of spouting meaningless words.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Lucas showed up at my new place one day unannounced. I’d been having a somewhat shitty day, but that was normal, so seeing his face at my door made me so happy that I just burst into tears.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was such a shitty friend. Always too preoccupied with my own shit to be much help to anyone. I’d mostly gone to see Daphné because Yann was so upset about Emma and I didn’t want him to find out that I’d already known about it. I also didn’t want to get too deep into conversation with him about it because I really did take Emma’s side on the matter. Yeah, she needed to tell him her feelings about where their relationship was at, but he couldn’t be mad at her for sleeping with someone else while they weren’t exclusive. She was allowed to make her own decisions.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Lola started crying when I started crying, which I think was more of a cry for attention than an actual cry, but it worked because Lucas and I both ran to her with open arms. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Lola was a cutie. Not sure she liked me much, but she didn’t like anyone very much, so I took any interaction as a win. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Once I composed myself enough, I asked him what he was doing there. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I felt another pit in my stomach at the implication that I needed some reason to come see her outside of rehearsals. We’d been such an integral part of each other’s lives for so long, but I’d left her hanging when she really needed me. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

He just started apologizing profusely, saying what a shitty friend he’d been and how sorry he was for not being there for me with everything with Manon and Lola and beyond. I appreciated his apology, I did, but he didn’t have anything to be sorry for. I’d contributed to my isolation as much as anybody, and the only person that really owed me an apology was Manon.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I mean, yeah, Manon definitely owed her an apology, that was for sure.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I told Lucas I’d been writing songs like crazy, and that I’d love to work on some with him, but he got all cagey when I mentioned it, said that he needed to wait until the Grammys ended to start writing. I didn’t know if it had something to do with Eliott or not, but I didn’t think so, because they’d been civil as could be in practices. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

She was the only one I told about Arthur. He wasn’t the reason for my writer’s block, but his expanded presence in my life was definitely a distraction I’d clung to willingly. I’d expected to be as deeply in love with him by now as I had been with Eliott after a single kiss in the bathroom of the Sun, but I wasn’t. I didn’t know what that meant.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

He spilled every thought or feeling he’d had in the last month or so and I listened patiently, waiting to make judgements. He told me about Arthur and his lack of feelings, and he told me about his times with Eliott, platonic as he swore they were, and I just sighed, wondering if he really was as stupid as he was acting.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

She told me I was still in love with Eliott, and that it wasn’t a bad thing, because we’d had no real reason to break up in the first place. I told her  _ no _ , we’d broken up so I could find myself a bit separate from him. It had made more sense at the time.

I just didn’t want to lose myself in him too much to the point that we were dependent on one another.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

The whole point of a relationship was to find someone you could depend on, someone who’d love you through the good and the bad moments of your life. Dependency wasn’t a bad thing if you didn’t let it become a bad thing. 

I’d observed Lucas and Eliott’s relationship throughout its many phases, and what it was came down to this: 

If Eliott was fire, Lucas was ice. They were on opposing ends of every spectrum, but it made them unstoppable together. It was only a matter of time before they found their way back to one another. They say all roads lead home, and I only know that’s true because, historically, all of Lucas and Eliott’s roads led to one another. I had no doubt they would again.

Maybe Lucas and Arthur were both fine at being one another’s distraction of the moment, but that would never be enough for either one of them, and I didn’t want things to go too much further than they had knowing for Lucas it would always be Eliott. He had to break things off with Arthur, even if he wasn’t ready to be back with Eliott yet.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

When people said things that made a lot of sense, I tended to ignore them.

**Basile Savary:**

We’d decided to perform “At The Same Time In Another Universe” for the Grammys. It was doing really well with radio play at the moment, so we figured we’d prolong its stay on the charts a little while longer. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Sofiane and I talked about doing another video while they got to work on the fourth album, and that song was the top contender. Of course, everyone seemed to be hanging in a weird balance with their group position, but I hoped it would all get figured out by the Grammys. I believed in them, they’d faced so many hardships I was sure this would be nothing but another little blip in their legacy.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Rehearsals would have been a lot easier if Emma didn’t leave to throw up every ten seconds. Manon said she was upset about everything that had happened with Yann, which I understood, but she could take an antacid, or something, at least.

**Emma Borgès:**

It was about two weeks before the Grammys when a little lightbulb clicked on in my brain, and then I freaked the fuck out. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Emma called me in a frenzy one night and said that I had to come over immediately. I was worried her house had been broken into or something. Daphné was there when I got there, and at first I thought this was Emma’s convoluted way of getting us to talk, but before either of us could say anything she told us she didn’t give a shit about whatever we had going on, she needed us to at least pretend to get along for her sake. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Lucas had been over at my place, so I left Lola with him, which I’m not sure he was too happy about, but she should have been sleeping anyway, so I wasn’t too worried. I didn’t know Manon was going to be there, but Emma sounded so freaked out that I decided to ignore anything between us to be there for Emma.

**Manon Demissy:**

Emma told us she thought she might be pregnant and I thought,  _ oh, that makes sense _ . I was kind of surprised I hadn’t thought of that before, but it wasn’t the time to look back and wonder, I needed to know what Emma needed from me. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

She told us that she thought she was pregnant, and then she showed us like twenty different pregnancy tests, all positive, so I figured we were a little bit past the ‘thinking’ stage.

**Emma Borgès:**

I didn’t know what to do. I’d called Manon for her rationality, and Daphné because she’d recently gone through something kind of similar. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I knew she needed me for my sensibility, so I tried to provide that for her. I told her she had three options. One, she could get an abortion, two, she could give the baby up for adoption, or three, she could have the baby and raise it herself. I assumed it was Yann’s, and she confirmed it. I told her that she should tell him, but she should decide what she was going to do first, because at the end of the day it was her body so no one else really got a say in the matter.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I was upfront with her. I told her that raising a child on her own would be a pain in the ass, especially if you felt like you were lost and had no idea what you were doing. I hadn’t technically chosen to have Lola in my life, but I could have let her get put into the system instead, and ultimately I was glad I hadn’t let that happen, difficult as it might be sometimes. But really, it was up to her. I’d help wherever I could, but I knew that didn’t amount to much in the long run. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I just didn’t know what it meant for our future, the future of Seven Minutes in Heaven. I wouldn’t be able to tour with an infant, and I didn’t really want to be a stay at home mom. There was nothing wrong with it, I just knew it wasn’t the life for me.

Manon assured me that I still had a little bit of time to decide, since it had likely happened at Baz’s wedding so I was probably about five or six weeks along. In the meantime, she and Daphné decided to stay over with me, and promised to go to the doctor with me in the morning to make sure the twenty tests I’d taken weren’t broken. 

_ (Emma laughs) _

We may have had our moments where we weren’t as close as other times, but those girls were always there for me when I really needed them, and that’s what made our friendship what it was.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

We all slept in the same bed together, Emma in the middle with Manon and I on either side. That was when my heart started to race a bit. I’d been able to keep things from invading my thoughts while I was focused on Emma, but she passed out almost immediately and suddenly I was keenly aware of the fact that Manon and I were in the same bed for the first time since she’d dropped me with no explanation. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Daphné was laying stiffly on the bed, eyes staring up at the ceiling, and I felt like I needed to say something. If the past couple weeks had taught me anything, it was that I knew what I wanted, and I needed to stop holding myself back from it. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Manon apologized, so quietly I thought it might have been the wind, but when I turned to look at her, she had tears in her eyes and she whispered it again, “Daph, I am so, so, sorry.” 

**Manon Demissy:**

If she didn’t want to forgive me, that was her right, but I hoped she would. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Of course I forgave her, but I asked why she’d done it like that, why I hadn’t even deserved an explanation.

She told me it was because she didn’t have one at the time, and I said she should have just  _ told  _ me that instead of shutting me out. I understood needing time, and I would have given her that time, but she’d treated me like I was disposable to her, and it had really hurt me. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I knew I should have talked to her, it was one of my greatest regrets, but I knew how I felt  _ now _ , and I wanted to know if it was ok for me to tell her. She said ok, so I did.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

She told me that she didn’t care about any strings or baggage, she just wanted to be with me. That Lola’s presence had scared her a little bit, but if Lola was a part of my life now, so was she a part of Manon’s. We’d be the best ‘moms’ the world had ever seen. 

I asked her if she was serious, because none of this made sense in my head. I thought I’d lost her forever, and I’d made my peace with that, but now here she was telling me that we weren’t a thing of the past, but of the future.

**Manon Demissy:**

I was deadly serious. I didn’t know if it was the right time to bring up the rest, but I couldn’t keep telling other people in my life to be honest about their feelings if I wasn’t going to do the same, so I told her about what I’d been talking to Idriss about.

I wanted to be an actress. Maybe it was strange to have a career shift like that, but I’d gone to a couple low key classes with Idriss, places where they likely wouldn’t recognize me, and I loved it something fierce. I wouldn’t be true to myself if I didn’t chase that new dream, even if it meant giving up something I’d worked at for so long.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Manon wanting to be an actress came out of nowhere, and it had not been what I’d expected of this conversation at all, but I could tell in the way she spoke that she was passionate about it. I asked her if that meant she’d be leaving the band, and she said she wasn’t certain yet, she was planning on waiting until after the Grammys to pursue anything any further, which I understood. 

I didn’t tell her about the half formed thought circling around in my mind about what my own future held, but I decided I’d talk to her about it when she decided what her next move was. 

She asked if I’d be coming home, then, and I told her that I didn’t want to impose on Lucas and Yann like that. Plus, maybe it would do us some good to take things a bit slower than before. I wanted this to last forever, and we couldn’t do that if she got scared off by the responsibility of raising a toddler within the first week.

She agreed, and started to lean in to kiss me before remembering Emma was in the middle of us. We both broke down into crazy laughter that woke Emma up.

**Emma Borgès:**

I woke up and Manon and Daphné were on either side of me laughing like idiots. I didn’t know if I was dreaming or what, so I just laid back down and closed my eyes again.

**Manon Demissy:**

I was one step closer to living my best life.

**Emma Borgès:**

The doctor confirmed my suspicions the next morning, and I took the news calmly. I’d known the truth in my heart from the moment I’d had the epiphany over the toilet bowl. 

Now I just had to figure out what my next step was. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Yann was getting annoying about the Emma drama, but I couldn’t  _ say _ that he was being annoying because I knew I was probably just as annoying, if not more, in the past with Eliott stuff. 

Arthur kept asking to hang out and I kept blowing him off because I’d been thinking over my conversation with Daphné. I knew I owed it to him to say where my head was at, but I had to lock down what exactly that was first. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas and I kept up our calls and excursions, even on days we rehearsed. They were always the highlight of my day. Idriss was the only one who knew about them, and he tried to talk to me about them, but I usually blew him off. One day I didn’t, though, because I’d had a great day with Lucas taking photos in this abandoned building I’d found on a walk once. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I needed him to cut the bullshit with me on what exactly was going on. And I needed to cut the bullshit with him on what  _ I  _ thought about what was going on. 

He told me that he and Lucas were just hanging out, as friends, to find inspiration for songs for their next album.

I told him that he and Lucas were both still in love with one another but were so afraid of the good things in life that they kept it at arms length to avoid being hurt more than they already had been. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I told myself Idriss didn’t know what he was talking about. But the truth was, he did. We’d gone our separate ways to avoid ruining things between us, but who was to say they would be ruined at all? We’d both grown and matured a lot since we’d met, I was in no way the same person I was when I’d been somewhat fresh out of a relationship with Camille, looking to make my start in something I was passionate about.

I hadn’t been ready for a lifelong love for a long time, but maybe I was now. What was the point of going back and forth and trying to preserve each other’s feelings when deep down we both knew we’d always find our way back to each other? I’ve always been a sucker for fate, for destiny, and it was high time I accepted that Lucas  _ was _ my destiny.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

He got a funny sort of expression on his face, so I told him that if he wasn’t ready to talk about it, he could write about it, because his music had always been a grounding tool for him.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I did write about it, though not in the way Idriss had meant for me to. I’d ended up with a screenplay, of sorts, and the more I kept writing like that, the less I thought about writing songs. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

We were a week out from the Grammys when Manon asked to meet with me. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I felt that I owed it to Imane to tell her before everyone else, that I was leaving the band to pursue acting. I knew she’d try to talk me out of it, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was where my life was meant to go.

I felt good with Daphné by my side once more. I spent time with her and Lola and it was like puzzle pieces started falling into place for me. I actually liked helping Daph with Lola, and once I started helping out it felt like Daphné started breathing again. I only wished I would have come to this realization sooner.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I didn’t tell her what Basile had told me, because I didn’t want everything to fall apart. I figured if I talked them both down, and the Grammys went well, they’d stay. Technically, the band could have survived without one of them, but not both. And it wasn’t really Seven Minutes In Heaven if even one of them was gone anyways.

**Manon Demissy:**

I don’t think Imane heard what I had to say, but I didn’t blame her. This band was her life and she’d given us her everything. I knew what I wanted, but I would have stayed, for her, if she really needed me to.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott and I stopped our excursions about a week before the Grammys. Something had changed again and I didn’t know what it was. He seemed content, happy even, like he’d had some sort of epiphany. He asked one day after practice if we could talk, but Arthur was right there, so I didn’t want to make either one of them upset and I just left with Yann instead.

I’d convinced Yann to speak to Emma, but he put it off until just a few days before the Grammys, while we were getting fitted for our outfits. 

We’d decided to wear the outfits we’d worn on the cover of our first album, because Alexia still had an in with Hollywood costume departments, and because we thought it was fitting, showing how far we’d come from our fifteen minutes of fame.

**Yann Cazas:**

They had to get a different yellow turtleneck for me because they didn’t know that I’d stolen the one I wore at the shoot. Or maybe they did, and they were just letting me get away with it. 

We did the fitting at Lucas’ place, so I went to talk to Emma in Manon’s bedroom while everyone else was changing to see what adjustments their outfits might need. She was in there alone, and I closed the door behind me so I could say what I needed to say. She started talking first.

**Emma Borgès:**

I just blurted it all out. I’d had time to think, and I discussed it at length with Manon and Daphné, and I decided I wanted to keep the baby. I’d always seen motherhood as something I wanted for my future, and I figured, why not let that future start now? I never knew what would happen going forward, but this could be a big blessing for me, if I saw it as one. I still wanted to do some sort of work, but I was ok with taking a little break from the band, especially if Manon was planning to leave. She’d told me that she wanted to pursue acting, and I thought that would fit her really well. Maybe it was time we all found something new. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Yeah. Emma was pregnant, and it was mine. She told me that she didn’t expect me to be involved, but she wanted me to know. I think I just stood there like a dumbass, mouth agape. When it became clear to her I wasn’t going to say anything, she left, and I was alone with my thoughts.

**Basile Savary:**

Wearing that orange suit again, I found it sort of funny how I’d been so scared to wear something so out there back in ‘82. Considering the things Lucas and Eliott and even Arthur had worn over the years, this bright orange suit was nothing. 

It didn’t fit quite as well as when I was twenty, of course, but they were able to figure out a way to make it work for me, and I felt fly as hell regardless. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

The bellbottoms had seemed so in style at that time but now I just felt ridiculous. It was mostly ridiculous in a good way, though, everyone was having fun trying on their outfits and having little moments of nostalgia.

I asked Lucas to help me get changed so we could be alone. He looked hot in that stupid powder blue suit and I really wanted to take it off him. He’d been avoiding me a little bit, and I didn’t know why. The hopeful part of me thought it might have been because he was catching real feelings that he didn’t know what to do with. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I needed to break off whatever I had going on with Arthur. It wasn’t fair to keep it up when it was just sex for me, with no real romantic feelings. He deserved better than that. 

He went in to kiss me when we were alone, but I stopped him. He froze and immediately retreated in on himself like he’d done something wrong. He asked if I was breaking up with him and then it was my turn to freeze. I thought we were just fucking, sometimes, not that either of us were under the impression that we were  _ together _ in any way.

I knew then, and probably even longer than I wanted to admit, that Daphné was right about me and Eliott. It would always be Eliott for me. He was the love of my life.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I knew that we weren’t technically together, but it came out before I could stop myself. We basically were, we did most of the things people did in relationships.

But then he just apologized for giving me the wrong impression, that it had only ever been about sex for him and he’d thought I felt the same. Maybe I would have gotten over it, maybe it wouldn’t have hurt so bad, if we hadn’t been interrupted by Eliott stumbling into the room. He’d been looking for somewhere to change, and he hadn’t known we were in there, but I saw the way Lucas’ face changed when he walked in. I thought about all the times in the last month or so that Lucas had been unreachable and the way that he and Eliott had some sort of peaceful and friendly understanding during rehearsals.

So, instead of just leaving and deciding to continue the conversation later, I whispered in Eliott’s ear as I left the room, then left them to deal with it. I was over the world according to Lucas Lallemant.

For good measure, I told Yann that Lucas was the one who’d told me about Emma and Alex.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Arthur whispered, “He’s been fucking me, just so you know. In case you thought you were still on his mind.”

I wasn’t mad at Lucas for finding someone, it’s sort of what I’d told him to do, but I’d truly thought we were back on the same page. I wanted us to be on the same page. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t know what Arthur said to him, but Eliott’s face fell, minutely. I only saw it because I knew him so well. His radiant smile was back in less than a second, but instead of staying there with me, he followed Arthur out, mumbling something about changing in the bathroom.

Yann found me in my bedroom, staring blankly at the wall in front of me, and he looked furious. He asked how I could have kept the stuff with Emma a secret from him, and said that he’d never forgive me for it.

**Yann Cazas:**

I was processing a lot of emotions and I took them all out on Lucas. In a way, it felt nice to yell at him like that, because he honestly probably did deserve it from someone at some point, we all did. I just let everything fly and told him I was going to stay with Arthur now, because I didn’t need friends that weren’t actually my friends.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

And here I’d thought that my life was looking up, for real this time. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Lucas nearly skipped our last practice the day before the Grammys. He’d been up all night in tears and wouldn’t tell me why. I wagered a guess that it had something to do with Yann leaving, but he didn’t confirm that for me.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas looked like shit at the rehearsal, but he wasn’t the only one. Emma looked like she was about to throw up, as per usual, Yann looked lost and confused, Arthur looked pissed off, and Manon looked worried. Basile and Daphné were the only ones focusing, and even so I could tell everyone else’s vibe was distracting them too. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I’d been there the entire day while they were getting fitted for their outfits, I had no idea why they were all fine and laughing and enjoying each other one minute and now they looked like they’d rather be with anyone else. 

If they didn’t pull it together for their actual performance… I didn’t even want to think about it.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Imane was stressed to the max, and I tried not to be so I could provide some support, but it was hard. Everyone looked like they hated each other or themselves and that was not the best environment to work in for anyone.

**Manon Demissy:**

I decided that maybe I’d stick it out with them a little while longer, see if I couldn’t help fix whatever the hell was going on. My other dream could wait.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Manon told me that she’d decided to stay in the band, that it had been foolish for her to want to leave at all. She felt like our weird dynamic had been some sort of karmic reaction to her thinking of leaving the group at all. It was ridiculous, but I wasn’t going to change her mind when she was in the middle of an anxiety attack. The best I could do was be there for her, and tell her that we could talk it all through after the Grammys. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I was so glad that things were solid again with Daph, because I’m not sure I could have managed that on my own. I had a tendency to try to carry everyone’s burdens as my own, I’d been doing it as long as I could remember, and Daphné made sure I didn’t collapse under that weight. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

And just like that, it was Grammy day. Yann, Eliott, and Arthur weren’t talking to me, Yann and Emma weren’t talking, Arthur seemed to be kind of mad at Eliott too, Daphné seemed mad at everyone for some reason, Manon looked on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and Basile was just oblivious to all the tension. Clearly, it was going to be a great day. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I sat them down beforehand and told them that I didn’t give a fuck about their issues, they’d pretend they were all perfectly fine and loved each other  _ so _ much, because their careers were at stake here. No ands ifs or buts.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Imane was right. We had to suck it up and enjoy the night. I  _ wanted _ to enjoy the night, but I was still confused about everything that Arthur had said. He seemed mad at Lucas, and Lucas looked sad, so I didn’t know if they’d had a fight or something.

**Basile Savary:**

Maria came with us for the red carpet and she looked absolutely stunning. I still couldn’t believe I’d gotten so lucky with her.

**Maria Savary:**

There was so much tension around everyone, but Basile either didn’t notice or didn’t care, so I tried not to either. I was at the Grammys for the first and probably last time in my life, I was going to enjoy it. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I kept trying to talk to Emma, but we kept getting interrupted, so I decided to wait until after the show, if she’d allow it. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I pretended I was living my best life. I was really good at that, I’d had years of practice. I did interviews on the carpet and waved to fans and got my photo taken like I was every bit as confident and happy as I’d been when the last tour ended. The press loved our outfits, so I talked about that decision when I didn’t know what else to talk about. They asked me about girls I was supposedly dating, and I shot them down in mysterious and cheeky ways that would only lead to more questions. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

The minute we got onto the red carpet, Lucas Lallemant the rock god was back. His smile never left his face and he looked like he was having the time of his life. I might have been one of the only ones who could see deeper and realize it was just another mask. 

I tried to do the same, but I was never as good at it as he was. Reporters asked me if there was any chance of reconciling with Lucille, like it hadn’t been years since we split in the first place. I was never upfront with reporters, but I shot down those questions like no one’s business. Lucas was the only future I wanted, and I’d wait as long as he needed. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I was nominated as a producer, so I was there too. I was sure I wouldn’t win, but it was too fun an experience to pass up. Noée came with me and we kissed on the red carpet for everyone to see, not caring what they might think. We wouldn’t get much publicity because we weren’t the famous musicians everyone wanted to photograph, but whatever happened was good enough for me.

**Noée Daucet:**

Alexia has always been my fearless firecracker. I love her so much. 

**Manon Demissy:**

My insides were still in a twist, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to manage it without Daph by my side, so I asked if she wanted the media to know we were back together, and she just smiled and she said she wanted everyone in the world to know how in love we were. It put me at ease, to have her smiling at me like that, like I was the only girl in the world.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Idriss was on babysitter duty for Lola, because Imane had forced him, so I was free to enjoy the night for what it was. Enjoy might be a strong word, because I was more than a little pissed at everyone’s problems for making Manon so upset, but as long as I was out there holding her hand I figured we’d be alright.

The media went crazy to find out that we were back together, and to my surprise the response was overwhelmingly positive. It made both of us feel a little better, I think.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

They were opening the show, so they went in about a half hour beforehand to make sure everything was set up perfectly and do a quick soundcheck.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas pulled me aside backstage, about five minutes before we were supposed to head out there, and he asked what Arthur had said to me. He looked so bothered by it that I didn’t even consider lying to preserve feelings. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

He told me what Arthur said, and I got so fucking pissed I almost squared up with Arthur right there and then. Instead, I calmed myself just enough, but I think I spat my next words at Eliott much more aggressively than I’d intended to. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

He told me that he’d been sleeping with Arthur, yeah, but that it meant nothing because he’d realized recently that he’d been an idiot for agreeing to a break in the first place. He was scared of good things, and even more scared of being abandoned, and our relationship had been so good that to him it had sometimes felt like a ticking time bomb. He didn’t believe in destiny, he said, but somehow he always ended up back in my arms, and that was where he wanted to live and love for the rest of his life. Call it soulmates, call it whatever you wanted, he wanted me despite any obstacles that might stand in our way.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

He didn’t answer my long rant for a few seconds and I feared I’d fucked everything up again, but then he smiled wider than I’d ever seen and kissed me so hard I felt the light of a thousand stars coursing through my veins. I took that as a yes.

**Eliott Demaury:**

After I kissed him, I told him yes, I wanted to be with him forever, however long that was. I said that I had something else to tell him after our performance, and he said he couldn’t wait, gave me one more kiss, and took his place on the stage. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I heard them, from my spot behind the next wing. I felt my blood boil in my veins as I took out my hearing aids and tossed them to whatever aides were backstage. I wasn’t going to use them during the performance anyways, but if I never had to hear Lucas giving Eliott everything he would never give me for one more second, I might have hit him with my drumsticks. 

No, Lucas didn’t owe me shit, but he couldn’t deny the fact that he’d led me on knowing I had feelings for him, and that he’d tossed me out like garbage without giving a single shit whether or not I was hurting. And I  _ was _ hurting. But nobody cared, because it was Lucas and Eliott. 

It would  _ always _ be Lucas and Eliott to them, I was just the idiot who’d gotten in the way.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

They pulled off the performance quite well for the abysmal performance they’d had in rehearsal the day before. It was damn near perfect, one of the best times I’d ever seen them play.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I was watching on tv, with Lola on my lap playing with something that three year olds liked to play with. I watched them perform, and I watched the way Lucas and Eliott were looking at one another, and I knew they’d worked it out. If Eliott was as smart as I thought, he took my advice. 

I decided to pour myself a celebratory drink, because I deserved it, damn it. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was probably so obvious on stage, but I couldn’t help it. I was done standing in my own way, and I was being the most genuine version of myself. Maybe it wasn’t as cool as the usual performance I put on, but it was  _ me _ .

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Lucas gave a new life to his performance that night, so I tried to do the same. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I didn’t know if I’d stick around or not, but if it was my last performance with these beautifully imperfect individuals that I loved more than life itself, I was going to make it count. 

**Basile Savary:**

Performing at the Grammys… I started to second guess my decision. I started to think that maybe I  _ should _ stick it out for one more album, to do something I really did love with people I loved even more. If I was happy, so was Maria, and vice versa.

**Yann Cazas:**

It was such a release, to perform in front of an audience like that again. Even more, because we were being recognized for all of our insane achievements. It felt good, even if our dynamic wasn’t the best it had been. We all unified as one unstoppable force for that performance.

**Emma Borgès:**

I knew it’d likely be my last time out there, at least for a while, so I took advantage, played some keys they’d never forget.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I took all my anger out on the drums. I didn’t know what we sounded like, and I didn’t care. I snapped my drumsticks at the end of the performance, because Eliott and Lucas were looking at each other like  _ that _ , and I couldn’t stand it anymore. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

It was, surprisingly, the best performance we’d ever had. It made me feel better about the other thing I had to talk to Lucas about. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

They pulled it off, in the end. I was prouder than I’d ever been. Even prouder than when they swept all the awards they were nominated for, including album, song, and record of the year. Alexia won too, for producer, and she gave her acceptance speech in sign language and spoken word, which was a powerful moment.

**Alexia Martineau:**

It was a surprise for Noée, if I won, which I didn’t think I was going to. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

They— we— walked out of there with thirteen awards. It was supposed to be an unlucky number, but I couldn’t see how it ever would be. I should have known better than to jinx it at that point. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I stopped Emma in the green room once everyone else left after we’d taken press photos with our awards. I needed to talk to her, and it couldn’t really wait. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I was on a high from all of our wins, and I really didn’t need Yann telling me that I’d cheated on him or whatever he thought. But that wasn’t what he said.

**Yann Cazas:**

I said I wanted to raise the baby with her, because thinking about it, I couldn’t imagine something better for me to be doing. I didn’t need to live the high life anymore, I didn’t even need to be in the band anymore. It wasn’t as fun as it had been back in the day, honestly, and now when I saw my future I saw us together with a child that would grow up with two loving parents. 

**Emma Borgès:**

My heart swelled, to hear him say that. I could have done it on my own, but if he wanted to do it with me, I wasn’t going to say  _ no _ . Then he asked if I wanted to get back together, and I said no.

**Yann Cazas:**

I’d poured my heart out about wanting to build a life together, and she said no. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I said that I was all in on raising this baby together, and if we eventually got back together, so be it, but I wasn’t ready for that at the moment. He hadn’t even thought to hear me out or let me explain some of what Lucas had told him, and that hit me really deeply. How could he claim to love me the way he did if he didn’t trust me, trust us?

**Yann Cazas:**

I understood what she was saying. I didn’t like it, but I understood it. I hoped that this phase wouldn’t last too long, because I wanted our baby to be with parents who loved each other as much as they loved them, but I was willing to wait it out. 

I was still mad at Lucas for not telling me, though, so I set the record straight and told her that it was Arthur who told me, not Lucas. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I felt like shit. I’d been mean to Lucas since Yann found out and it wasn’t even his fault. I mean, maybe he told Arthur, but I guess I couldn’t be too mad about that. Arthur must have told Yann that I actually cheated, instead of it being before we were fully together, because when I told Yann that, he seemed surprised. 

Suddenly it didn’t seem that bad to be leaving the band for a while. I told Yann that he could stay, because they needed him more than me, but he said that he was over it anyway, and that maybe we should quit while we were ahead. We both told ourselves it would just be a break, but I think we knew in the back of our minds that it was something more. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I didn’t care that we’d won all these impressive awards, there was no way I was working with or speaking to Lucas Lallemant ever again. I was out, they could find a new drummer for all I cared. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I felt like we came, we saw, we conquered. It felt like the perfect spot to move on to a new chapter of my life, and I asked Daphné if I was making the wrong decision, not sticking it out with the band. She told me the only wrong decision would be to not follow my heart, so that’s what I did. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I decided to leave the band too, to start a solo career. Lucas and Eliott didn’t need me up there to shine, I wanted to shine on my own. I’d let them underutilize my talents for far too long, it was time to take my place in the spotlight. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

At one of the afterparties, I told Lucas about my plan for the future, that I wanted to leave the band and become a director. I was so worried about his reaction, because I didn’t know if him wanting to be with me hinged on both of us being in the band, but all I saw when I looked in his eyes was love and genuine excitement. 

He told me that he thought that was a wonderful idea, and that he would always be my biggest cheerleader in whatever I did. He then confided in me that he was having doubts about continuing with the band too. He loved music, writing, making, performing, all of it, but he didn’t feel that same rush he’d felt with all the fame and the fortune that he had when he first started.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I wanted to be me, I didn’t want to wear masks anymore. I could have done that and stayed in the band, sure, but I wanted some of my privacy back, I wanted time to live the life I’d never gotten to live with the man I loved and not have to be afraid of who might see us. If that meant I had to fade away until everyone forgot I existed, I was… fine with that.

_ (Lucas laughs) _

You’re looking at me like I’m crazy, but I mean it. I’ve always been a bit of a narcissist, we all know this, but I’d gotten practically everything I’d ever wanted, what more was there for me? Being hailed as a god lost its allure at a certain point, and all I wanted was to be loved by one person so much it felt like how being onstage felt for me in the beginning. 

I was sure I’d have regrets, I’d second guessed myself a million times already, but I felt like this was what I had to do, for  _ me _ , and I didn’t really care about what anyone else thought about it. If I got bored in two months, well then I’d have the band to fall back on, or so I thought.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

It felt like it happened in a rapid succession. I was on top of the world, then all of a sudden Yann and Emma were there, saying they were taking an indefinite leave from the band because Emma was pregnant. Last I knew they weren’t even together, but somehow in the two seconds I’d looked away they’d planned their lives away from Seven Minutes in Heaven. I couldn’t very well say no, not under those circumstances, so I said I’d call a meeting for them to tell everyone in person and they agreed, leaving me standing still in shock.

Next was Arthur, who said that he was fed up with everyone and didn’t want to ever even be in the same room as Lucas or Eliott ever again. He said that he was sorry to leave me high and dry, but drummers were a dime a dozen, and he knew no one would really even miss him at all. He was gone before I could say any different.

Manon I expected, at least, and now that we were three down, it wasn’t like I could say no to her wanting to leave. Daphné pulled me aside afterward and said that she’d stay in the band if I needed her to, but she wanted to branch out on her own if possible, and she’d like me to still be her manager as she did so. That was a silver lining, at least. 

By the time Lucas and Eliott showed up, I said, “I suppose you’re quitting the band?” sarcastically, and when both of their faces dropped into expressions of surprise and  _ how did you know that? _ I knew that it was all over. 

Basile came to me last, and he told me that he’d changed his mind, that he’d do one more album with the group. I feel bad about it, but I just broke down laughing in his face at the absurdity of it all. 

There was never a meeting, because in the end they’d all quit of their own volition. I didn’t know who hated who or who wasn’t talking to who, so I went against everything my brain was telling me to do and I just let it go. I’d always had their best interests at heart, and I always would, even if it meant that now their best interests didn’t serve my business goals. I had no idea what we’d do for the three albums promised to Shame, but Sofiane and I would figure something out.

At least I still had Daphné, and I was ready to see her star soar even higher. I figured Lucas would come back too, but I also knew it might take longer than expected given how stubborn he was. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I thought Imane was joking when she said everyone quit, but she wasn’t. Eliott called me to tell me the next day, because he felt he owed me an explanation. I appreciated it, but I just wanted him to be doing what he wanted to do. Not the best advice from a manager, maybe, but I’d always been more of a friend than a manager anyway.

**Basile Savary:**

When Imane told me that everyone else had quit already I was… shocked. Ultimately, it ended up working out the way I’d wanted, but I hadn’t expected anyone other than me to leave the band. None of them told me personally either, which I guess I should have expected but it did hurt a little bit. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I moved out of my place with Alexia because she and Noée wanted to move in together, and I needed time to decide what my next move was. I didn’t bother telling anyone else in the group that I was leaving, I figured they’d be happier with me gone. 

I wasn’t expecting to read in the newspaper a week after the Grammys that we’d gone on a hiatus. I could have checked in with everyone to see what that was about but the truth was that I just didn’t care. 

**Manon Demissy:**

‘Hiatus’ was a light way of putting it. I think we all knew it was the real deal. Daph and I talked about it with Lucas and Eliott often, obviously, as well as with Emma, and none of us even considered reuniting as an option.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Once the news was out there that Seven Minutes In Heaven was on a ‘break’, I started brainstorming with Imane for a career of my own. I felt free in a way I never had before, and I loved it.

**Yann Cazas:**

Emma and I moved back in together, but we more or less coexisted as roommates. That was fine with me, I just wanted to be there when she needed me. Having no outside expectations was new for me, but it felt like a weight off my chest. I should have talked to Lucas, it was dumb and petty to be mad at him, but his stubbornness wore off on me.

**Emma Borgès:**

I was restless all the time and I second guessed my decision to take a leave from the band but knew it wouldn’t have made any difference if I hadn’t, because everyone else would still have left anyway. Playing piano became a source of comfort for me again in a way it hadn’t since we’d started our road to fame. It wasn’t my job anymore, I could just enjoy it as a simple pleasure in my life. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I completed the screenplay I’d written and wanted to shop it around, but I was hesitant. Lucas told me it was amazing, but it felt too personal for my first foray into the world of film. I decided to take a minute away from it to just enjoy the fact that Lucas and I were together, for real, forever, and that we were done with the up and down back and forth thing. I could love him wholly and completely and even though it was daunting, I knew better now than to be scared. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I had regrets every day. I stood by my choice to stay out of the public eye, but I missed music. It had been my everything for so many years. I’d given up Eliott for music once, and now I was doing the opposite. It still hadn’t really clicked to me that I could have both.

Sometimes Eliott would catch me listening to our old records or flipping through magazines we’d done interviews for or looking through the polaroids that had documented our work on the three albums and I could see that he was worried that I was sad. 

I wasn’t sad, I couldn’t be when Eliott, the love of my life, woke up beside me every morning with a smile and a kiss, I was just feeling different. Different took adjustment, which I was no stranger to, even though I fought it every time it reared its head. This time, I decided not to fight, and let change sweep me away under its wing into a future I knew nothing of, but desperately wanted to be a part of.

Seven Minutes in Heaven was over, but a new chapter of life was just beginning. For all of us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next time: track 10: seven minutes later - spring 1990 to present
> 
> find me on tumblr: kieunora
> 
> as always, hope everyone is safe and healthy ❤️


	10. Track 10: Seven Minutes Later - Spring 1990 to present

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for reading it's been so fun to write this !!!
> 
> also: black lives matter, and on my blog (livvyblxckthxrn) i've reposted a bunch of posts with links on ways you can help, from donating to signing petitions and beyond, please please please check them out and help in any way you can the unjust treatment of minorities across america and across the world is disgusting and we all need to take action to make a real difference.
> 
> tw: mentions of bipolar disorder, eating disorders, addiction, 9/11, and self harm

_As Seven Minutes In Heaven’s indefinite hiatus turned permanent, each member of the band’s lives continued to grow and change both in the spotlight and far from it. Now, thirty years after the split, they, as well as those intrinsically tied to their lives as artists, continue to fill us in on what happened after, and why they never got back together._

**Alexia Martineau (producer,** **_Fifteen Minutes of Fame_ ** **,** **_Le Premier_ ** **,** **_Minute by Minute_ ** **, and** **_Polaris_ ** **):**

I figured I’d be out of a job with Seven Minutes in Heaven out of the game. I’d been helping some other artists, but they already had main producers, and I knew Charles didn’t like me much anymore, even if I’d made his record label into _something_ with Eliott and the band. Better than just ‘something’, even, every artist was clamoring to work with Shame. 

Yet, my Grammy was good for something. I got to listen to demos, pick what artists we signed, and on top of that, pick which ones _I_ wanted to work with. Charles was barely involved anymore, honestly, sticking to more of the behind the scenes stuff. It was preferable for everybody, I think.

**Charles Munier (studio head, Shame Records):**

I fucking celebrated when Imane Bakhellal told me her band was taking an indefinite hiatus. They’d signed on for three more albums, sure, but I’d just release old demos and make money off them, there really was no bad side of this deal for me. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

My work was what fulfilled me, in many ways, and I was more than happy to continue with it. In my personal life, Noée and I were solid. Arthur moved out, so she moved in, and both of us were more than ready to take that step.

**Noée Daucet (journalist, Rolling Stone):**

I would have married her if I could have. She was the one, I knew it in my bones. But, moving in together was still a big step forward, so I decided to take those kinds of developments as they came, considering some of the things we wouldn’t be able to do. 

Imane hired me to write some bullshit story about why the band was taking a hiatus. It was a lot of fluff and beating around the bush, but it did the job. Basically, she wanted everyone to know that they weren’t working together anymore, but not _why_ they weren’t. I didn’t even know why myself, but I didn’t worry too much about it. I figured Arthur would tell us eventually.

**Alexia Martineau:**

Arthur kind of dropped off the face of the planet for a little while, but I was glad when he started talking to us again. He wouldn’t say anything about Seven Minutes in Heaven, especially not why they’d split, but I knew we’d get it out of him eventually.

**Noée Daucet:**

Alexia and I both got busy with work again, and I could tell we were both better for it. It was nice to go out and do something I loved and then come home and spend the rest of the night with _someone_ I loved. We took cooking classes together in our free time, because Arthur had been the chef of the household before, and we couldn’t just eat out every night. 

They weren’t the most accessible classes, or very accommodating to the fact that I’m deaf, but I still picked up some things. Alexia was a master though, she caught on really quickly and everything she made turned out even better than our instructor. Such was being Alexia, she was good at pretty much everything she tried. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

Like I said, I’m the master of hobbies. I even started taking dance classes again. Noée passed on those, but I enjoyed them immensely. I even convinced Imane and Sofiane to come with me sometimes. They were both better than I was, which was annoying, Sofiane most of all. In another life he’s a world famous dancer, I swear. 

**Noée Daucet:**

Our lives were both simple and not so simple. We had a lot going on with our respective jobs, but it was nowhere near what we’d had to endure with Seven Minutes in Heaven. In some ways, it was nice, but a lot of times, I missed them and the energy they brought to our lives. 

It felt like time passed by so quickly. The nineties were a flash, and suddenly it was the twenty first century, which people didn’t even think would happen, they thought the world would implode the minute the clocks hit 00:00 on January first, 2000. Obviously, the world did not implode. 

Alexia and I discussed having kids during that time, but we decided to wait, and if one of us wanted kids at any point we’d have an actual conversation then. I never did, we got a few dogs at one point, and that was enough for me.

**Alexia Martineau:**

Growing up, I’d always thought there was only one way my life could go, but I’d learned so much once I moved to LA and got hired by Shame. I didn’t need a nuclear family at the end of the cul de sac, or a husband that loved me too little. I needed music, in whatever way I could get it, and I needed Noée. Anything else was extra. 

Noée never really wanted kids, and I was secretly happy, because I didn’t either. I saw secretly because sometimes I felt like it was a dirty secret of mine, not wanting kids. Women are raised to believe that their lives won’t have purpose until they bring a child into the world, but that’s just not true. Women are so much more than anyone gives us credit for. I don’t doubt that children give some people purpose, and fill their lives with so much joy, hell I’ve seen it with some of my friends, but that wasn’t how it was for me or Noée. And that’s perfectly ok. No one tells you that’s ok, but I promise that it is. 

You don’t owe anyone anything, much less a whole human being. Noée and I had our dogs, Cornelius and Barnaby, named after characters from _Hello, Dolly!_ , a musical I loved, and they were more than enough for us.

We never stopped loving each other either, not even for a minute, which I’m not sure if a lot of couples can say. And yet, we were the ones who weren’t allowed to be married. 

**Noée Daucet:**

Alexia and I waited to get married until gay marriage was legalized everywhere in the United States. I’m pretty sure that’s what Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie said that they did too, but come on, Alexia and I were so much cooler than them. I proposed to her the day it was legalized everywhere, and she proposed to me at the same time. We’d both had a surplus of years to plan, and somehow we ended up with the same brain as always. It made it doubly special, to me. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

We’ve been together since the eighties, but we’ve only been married for five years. Isn’t that kind of fucked up? I guess all that matters in the end is that we made it to this point at all, and I’m grateful every day that we did. I love Noée more than I’ve ever loved anyone. 

**Noée Daucet:**

Alexia’s my soulmate, that much has been clear to me for a long time. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

I’m still working in music production, but I have been taking a bit of a break this year to work on a passion project of mine. I’ve always wanted to make a documentary, and there’s no better story than the untold history of Seven Minutes in Heaven. 

I admit, it’s been weird to be the one in front of the camera for different parts of this story, and behind it for others, but I do have some insight that can’t be ignored.

_(Alexia laughs)_

I mean, who else would have gotten permission from everyone that’s been interviewed to tell this story? Of course it’s me. 

**Noée Daucet:**

Alexia’s the visionary. It’s a bit weird talking about her like this when she’s right in front of me asking questions, but I’m doing my best.

_(Noée rolls her eyes)_

No, I’m not going to talk about how hot I think you are. Sorry— how hot I think Alexia is.

I’m a producer on the film, because as you can probably tell, my darling Alexia needs a bit of a gravity boot sometimes, lest her head float too high in the clouds.

What! I can say that, I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I love you— I mean, Alexia— for her innate nature as a dreamer. Am I done now?

**Alexia Martineau:**

Never work with family, kids. 

_(Alexia gets hit in the head with a pillow)_

Hey! It was a joke! 

**Basile Savary (rhythm guitarist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

My life didn’t get _more_ interesting after leaving the band. Different and interesting in its own way, but nothing even compares to being a part of one of the most iconic bands of all time. It’s still weird for me to think of us that way, or the fact that I was a part of it. To be frank, I was probably the least ‘iconic’ member of the band, but I wear that with a badge of honor because it means I caused the least amount of problems. 

_(Basile laughs)_

No but seriously, the fame was fun while it lasted, for sure, but once it was gone I didn’t yearn for it like I had when I was eighteen. Somewhere along the way, I grew up, which is the best thing I could have hoped for.

**Maria Savary (nurse; wife, Basile Savary):**

We’ve had a good life. One may even say a great one. It was very weird, at first, coming to the realization that there were no more deadlines or tours or albums or whatever. I think Baz missed playing quite a bit, because he’d sometimes pick up his guitar and play for hours on end, either by himself or for me. I understood that, and I asked him to teach me how to play, so we could both engage with something that clearly still made him happy.

He was actually a really good teacher.

**Basile Savary:**

Teaching Maria to play was really fun. During my time in the band, I’d never been the best at anything. Lucas, Manon, and Daphné were all better than me at guitar, they were just too nice to say so, but in our house I was the undisputed master of that skill, so I shared that knowledge happily.

**Maria Savary:**

We decided to have our first kid in ‘93. It was a boy, _our_ boy. We named him Matthew. 

**Basile Savary:**

Matthew, Maria, and Basile. Our perfect little family. Well, at least for the time being. 

I didn’t really keep in touch with my old bandmates as often as I’d have liked to, but they all got calls when Matt was born. Arthur and I were back to being thick as thieves at that point, so he was Matt’s godfather, and Maria’s sister was his godmother. 

We probably would have been fine, neither one of us ever working again, considering the price tag on my success with the band, but Maria loved being a nurse so I was more than happy to be a stay at home dad of sorts for a while. I felt it was the least I could do, and I loved doing it. 

**Maria Savary:**

A lot of people say their spouse is the best parent in the world, but with Basile it’s actually true. He is truly the best father I’ve ever seen, and the best life partner I could have asked for. I like to think that I was a decent mother as well, but I had nothing on Baz. 

**Basile Savary:**

Maria never gives herself enough credit. I mean, she not only carried and delivered three beautiful children, but she also provided for the family in any way she could as well as maintaining an active role in parenting our three little hooligans.

We had Amanda in ‘95, then Claire in ‘98, and I didn’t realize how incomplete our life had been without them until they were all there. Yeah, parenting had its ups and downs, but I really wouldn’t have changed any of it for the world.

**Matthew Savary (son, Basile and Maria Savary):**

I didn’t even know Dad was in a band until high school. I knew he played guitar, but I always thought it was in like a ‘dad’ way, you know? 

**Basile Savary:**

They met my bandmates, and I could have sworn I talked about my time in the band, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if it just slipped my mind. Seven Minutes in Heaven felt like an entirely different lifetime, one that sometimes I wasn’t even sure if I lived.

I know that sounds crazy, more of my life was spent with them than pretty much anything else, but I always got the feeling that wasn’t my destiny. I think it was Lucas’ destiny, for sure, but it wasn’t mine. My destiny was with my family, and falling into that role as a husband and a father who was sometimes embarrassing and messed up but was so full of love throughout it all, well, that was easier than anything I’d ever done.

**Claire Savary (daughter, Basile and Maria Savary):**

I’m in a band, too. We’re way better than my Dad, but he always insists that the eighties had the best music. Though, I think he’s mostly teasing. He taught me how to play the guitar, actually. He tried to teach all of us, but Matt was more into Mom’s stuff, he’s a nurse like her, and Mandy got Uncle Arthur to teach her the drums instead. Though, I think that was more of an ‘in your face Dad’ sort of thing than her actually liking playing the drums. 

Now that I think about it, I’m not sure if Uncle Arthur ever even taught her how to play the drums or if they just smoked weed together while pretending to be playing the drums. 

**Amanda Savary (daughter, Basile and Maria Savary):**

Oh yeah, Uncle Arthur and I just smoked a lot of weed. I don’t even know how to tell a snare drum from a bass drum. Is a bass drum even a thing?

**Basile Savary:**

Arthur always said he didn’t play favorites, but Mandy was very obviously his favorite. She was a lot like him, personality wise, which was both a blessing and a curse. Claire inherited a lot of _me_ , and she and Mandy were often thick as thieves, so in some strange karmic fashion the universe allowed me to experience Arthur and I’s friendship and how annoying we probably were to everyone on the outside.

_(Basile laughs)_

I’m joking. Mostly. 

**Maria Savary:**

Baz started teaching guitar lessons, because he was honestly a really amazing teacher, and once Claire and I knew enough to not need his help anymore, he still wanted some sort of musical outlet. He never said that he missed the band, but I always wonder if he did. Does, even, to this day.

**Basile Savary:**

Yeah, there were times I missed it. There are times I still do miss it. But, I mean, I’m in my late fifties now, there was no way that, even under the best circumstances, we would have lasted an extra thirty years.

I’m glad I started teaching lessons though. Some people know who I am, some didn’t. Most often it’s their parents who know me, and the kids themselves don’t give a shit. The perks of being played on the oldies stations, I guess. 

I really do love it, though. I love seeing when people have a passion for music, it reminds me a lot of Lucas way back when, and even if that boy was a handful sometimes, the pure passion and love he carried for music was something special.

**Maria Savary:**

Once the kids learned that their dad was in a super famous eighties rock band, they wouldn’t shut up about it until they met everyone else in the band. At that point in their lives they’d met nearly everyone, but Lucas and Eliott were perpetually absent.

They came when we called, though. I wondered if maybe they’d been worried all this time that we didn’t want them in _our_ lives anymore, instead of the other way around. 

Lucas hit it off with Mandy, as expected. I only knew small bits of what had happened between him and Arthur back in the day, from what Arthur told Basile who told me, but it said something that even after so many years they hadn’t spoken to one another. But it was also unsurprising that Mandy, who carried a lot of the same traits as Arthur, would be Lucas’ bestie right off the bat. 

I think Claire’s dreams came true when Lucas agreed to have a ‘jam sesh’ with her. Claire’s words, not mine.

**Claire Savary:**

My Dad was friends with _Lucas Lallemant_ . They’d made _three albums_ together. And he hadn’t even mentioned it until Matt was in _high school_. Lucas was the coolest one in the band, for sure. I didn’t know if he and Eliott Demaury were dating or something, because sometimes they acted like they were and whenever we saw them they always came to visit together, but maybe they were just like dad and Arthur, best of friends.

I thought I was good at playing the guitar when I met Lucas. But then he agreed to play with me, and I was like _holy shit_. He had to have been the best guitar player in the world. Even better than my Dad, who I’d thought was as good as it got. The worst part is that he brushed it off like it was nothing and said his sister was better than him anyway. I’d met Manon, but I’d never played with her, so I could only hope someday I’d be able to see if that was actually true. 

I convinced my friends to start a band with me after I met Lucas for the first time. We’re never going to be as good as my Dad’s band, even though I tell him we are, which is super annoying because of course my Dad had to be a part of one of the most famous bands of all time, but I think we’ve got promise.

We actually have some songs on Soundcloud! Can you tell people to listen, like put a link on the screen or something, so when people see this they can check us out? Or you can put my Instagram name, I have our Soundcloud linked in my bio. 

**Basile Savary:**

Mandy and Lucas were best friends, but Claire worshipped him. Eliott and Lucas came around a lot more often after that first time.

Matt, on the other hand, was partial to Eliott. Sunshine calls to sunshine, I guess, and Matt’s always been _our_ sunshine boy.

**Matthew (Matt) Savary:**

My Dad and Eliott were the type of men I wanted to grow to be. This wasn’t to say my Dad’s other friends, like Lucas, Yann, or Arthur _weren’t_ , but they just didn’t have the same inherent kindness and love flowing from them like my Dad and Eliott did. They were cool dudes, but I didn’t ever really care about being cool, I wanted to love people and help people. My Mom did it too, and I guess that’s a main reason I followed her footsteps and became a nurse.

Mom and Dad are really great, as much shit as I probably gave them when I was growing up. They always had our best interests at heart, and they didn’t care that I was ‘softer’ than other boys, or that I got teased for wanting to be a nurse instead of a doctor. They loved me for me, and I hope I can do the same for my future children. 

**Maria Savary:**

Basile and I are empty nesters now. Matt is in Seattle, working at a hospital there. I blame that on all the _Grey’s Anatomy_ the two of us watched together over the years, but he loves it so who am I to judge?

Mandy is doing what Mandy does best, which is everything and nothing all at once. She’s only twenty-five, she doesn’t have to have her whole life figured out anyway. Right now she’s backpacking across Europe with her girlfriend, and judging by the facetimes and Instagram updates, she’s doing just fine. Sorry about that, by the way, you’ll have to get her interviews later, she’s coming home for a few weeks in December to celebrate the holidays with family, so thankfully it won’t be too long a wait for any of us.

Claire is closest to home. She’s graduating college in the spring, she goes to UCLA. I’m actually surprised she stayed so close to home, but I suspect it has more to do with her band than with us. They’re actually pretty great. If this was the eighties, I’m sure they’d have a three record deal.

_(Basile says something off camera)_

_(Maria laughs)_

No, really, she is very talented, and I’m really proud of her for all she’s done. I’m just hoping we can rope her back into living with us for a little while after school, I’ve missed having kids around this house. 

**Basile Savary:**

We debated moving back to Minnesota when Maria was pregnant with Matt, because I thought it wouldn’t be a bad place to start our new life, but in the end we decided to stay in LA. the weather really can’t be beat, except for when we’re on fire or in the middle of an earthquake. At least there’s no Minnesota winters.

Am I happy with how my life turned out, after Seven Minutes in Heaven? Absolutely. I truly wouldn’t change any of this for the world. Maybe it’s not the life some people would have chosen for themselves, including _all_ of my bandmates, but it was the perfect fit for me. I mean, come on, what did you expect from the only guy in the band with a stable relationship status for a number of years. I swear, the back and forth with _literally everyone else_ was enough to make me want to scream COMMUNICATE in their faces, but in some ways I do miss it. 

I wouldn’t mind seeing everyone, all together, again, but I know it’s a pipe dream. They say you don’t know the good old days until they’re gone, but I honestly think that every bit of my life has been so overwhelmingly good that it’s hard to decide what counts as the good old days. 

I’ll give you a controversial opinion, if you want. _Fifteen Minutes of Fame_ is my favorite of our albums. I know, I know, _Polaris_ is _right there_ , but I stand by it. Maybe I just have some of my fondest memories from that time, when we were still new to it all and everything was so different and exciting. I never would have imagined, at that point in my life, that someday we’d win thirteen Grammys, or that people still recognize me on the street today if they look at me long enough.

It’s a strange, beautiful life that I live.

**Imane Bakhellal (manager, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I was devastated by their split, more so than anyone else, I think. I mean, what the hell was I going to do, now that the band I’d staked everything on was gone? Sofiane is a perpetually positive person, he always tried to find the bright side of things, but sometimes his optimism was just too much.

**Sofiane Alaoui (manager, Eliott Demaury):**

I didn’t know if my managerial duties were still in play for Eliott’s career jump. Like, was I supposed to figure out how the film industry worked now, or would he be getting a new manager?

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Sofiane did mention to me that technically my role as a manager didn’t just disappear if they weren’t doing music. Manon wanted to be an actress, so I could manage her in that regard. Too bad I’d never learned how to manage someone in that industry. 

I did remember what Daphné said too, about wanting a solo career, but she was so busy with Lola that I didn’t know when exactly that was going to come into play. I’d made quite a bit of money, working for them for almost ten years, but that was never what it was about for me. Yes, it was nice to live comfortably, but I liked being involved with everything, even all the drama and the chaos. 

I called Lucas, every now and again, asking when he’d be coming back to work. He always thought I was joking, and I was, partly, but we always understood each other on a different level than some of the others. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the fact that he might really be done. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Eliott still wanted me to work with him, so I told Imane to reach back out to Manon and Daphné, I was sure they’d still want to work with her. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I didn’t even have to reach out to Daphné, in the end. She came to me. She said that she didn’t know if she wanted to keep working with Shame, because of Charles, but she still wanted Alexia on board for production if possible. I agreed with that. 

There was also the problem of the band owing the label three more albums. If they weren’t together, they obviously couldn’t make more music. I also didn’t want Charles making more money off them on projects that weren’t approved by every member. 

I truly didn’t know what to do. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

Imane called me to ask about Shame, and how things were going around here. I was working with a new group at the time, and things were good for me, but every time Seven Minutes in Heaven was brought up, the tension was very palpable. It was obvious Charles only cared about ways he could make money off their name, but I refused to give up any of their demos.

**Charles Munier:**

Alexia could pretend to be all righteous, or whatever, but at the end of the day I was the boss, and people would do what I said. Even if I couldn’t boss Seven Minutes in Heaven around, they were gone now, so I could do whatever the hell I wanted to do. And I did. They had a shit ton of unused demos, and I packed them up and released them in three separate records. I did what I had to do, they were the ones in jeopardy of breaching their contract. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I had a grand total of one conversation with Charles before I called Daphné and said I wouldn’t let her sign with Shame. I knew that, if it came down to it, we could beat him in court, but what was the point of that? People like Charles will never learn their lesson, never take no for an answer, and never face any real consequences. It’s bullshit, but that’s America for you.

Did you know Charles got arrested for tax fraud in ‘05? Of course you didn’t, because he paid off everyone involved, with money he made from the band he hated so much. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

I love everything about Imane, but her passion is something that can’t be beat. It isn’t in your face, but it’s straight to the point. When she sets her mind to something, she gets shit done. She gets this glint in her eyes, like a spark, and you know that she can do anything. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I was worried about working with Daphné independently, a decision we made because, frankly, we were both fed up with record labels, but I figured if anyone could do it, it would be her. She got to writing, and I got down to the business side of things. 

On top of it all, Sofiane and I started talking about having kids. I knew that he wanted enough kids to fill a sports team, but I thought I’d be fine with one or two. After all, my parents had only had two kids, and they never seemed regretful about it. We tabled the discussion for a little while, to work on our separate projects, but I knew we couldn’t put it off forever. 

**Idriss Bakhellal (actor,** **_Life is Now_ ** **):**

Imane asked me for advice on having kids. I know, right. What the hell did I know? Nothing, really, but that wasn’t entirely why she’d come to me. She’d come to me because I was her brother, first and foremost, and she knew she could trust me more than anyone else. And that I’d always have her best interests at heart. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Idriss was helpful in that he was so entirely unhelpful. Sometimes I was jealous of him, the life he lived. We were both still practicing our religion, but the rules had always been different for him than for me. We both knew it, but I also knew that he didn’t concern himself with it much. He could pretty much do anything he wanted, drink, party, hook up with people, you name it, and sometimes it pissed me off. I could have done those things too, technically, but my faith had always been stronger than any of those urges, and I hated when my choice to abstain from certain things was undermined as some form of oppression. But then there was Idriss, a Muslim just like me, but you couldn’t see it written on him the way you could see it on me. I know a lot of people have thought my hijab is another sign of oppression, but it was freedom, and love, and faith. I don’t expect a lot of people to understand it, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

In regards to my queries, however, Idriss was the same as ever, asking questions right back, trying to trick me into saying what I was holding back. Curse him, it worked every time. I was scared of kids, what that would mean for us. It wasn’t that I didn’t ever want kids, I just hated that there was a certain window of time where it seemed more plausible than others, and that I had to adhere to that timeline. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I knew Sofiane would never make Imane do anything she didn’t want to, and if she decided one day that she didn’t want any kids, he’d respect that, that was why I advised her to just talk to him about it. I could be there for her to rant to, but I was about ten years behind her in terms of maturity, not that I’d ever tell her that, so I just couldn’t give advice in the way I wished I could. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I knew Idriss was right, though. I’d never get anywhere if I didn’t just talk to Sofiane. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Imane told me all her worries about having kids, and I was secretly glad, because I was worried as hell too. I didn’t doubt either of our parenting abilities, but it was still scary to think about. To ease her nerves, though, I told her we’d basically parented eight off the handle creative types, and that hadn’t turned out half bad. 

She told me that was a horrible example, because in the end they’d broken up, but I didn’t see it that way. They’d all just started a new chapter of their lives, fallen into new passions that were maybe closer to what was inside their hearts.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I knew he was right, but I couldn’t stop thinking, _what about Lucas?_ The band _was_ his one true passion, I knew it the way that I knew the order of their setlists from each tour. He wasn’t even thirty, he couldn’t just be… done. Not like the rest of them.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Something troubled her about that explanation too, I could see it, but overall I think it sunk in. I was still fine with waiting, though, there was no rush, as I saw it. I’d only agree to having kids when we were both ready for it.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I took my mind off it for a while by starting to work with Daphné more often. I’d asked Manon if she was still in need of a manager, too, and she said that she’d love to work with me, but she was mostly taking classes at the moment, to see if she had a chance at being any good as an actress.

Anyone who knew her knew that she’d excel at anything she tried. 

**Daphné Lecomte (background vocalist and percussionist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I’m not sure I would have had the confidence to venture out on my own without Imane there beside me. One of my biggest worries was working as an independent artist, but she seemed so sure of it that I tried to take on this new challenge with confidence.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

She was mostly just writing music, because we had no studio or anything to record in yet. I’d reached out to Alexia, but she was contractually prohibited from working with anyone outside Shame. We looked for any possible loophole we could find, but there just wasn’t one. 

We made things work, though, of course we did. Though I suppose that’s more Daphné’s story to tell than mine.

Working with Daphné, I was comforted by how good I was at what I did. That might sound arrogant, but I learned a long time ago that the world will hate confident women no matter who you are or what you look like, so it was pointless not to embrace my confidence. If they had to fear me to respect me, so be it.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

In ‘92, Imane brought up kids again. She said that she was ready for that next step, if I was. I most definitely was. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

We had our daughter at the beginning of ‘93, and then our son the year after. We wanted kids close in age, like Idriss and I had been. Their names are Sana and Elias, but I suppose you already knew that.

One of the biggest discussions we had, before Sana was born, was about any of our future children’s surnames. I’d remained Bakhellal even after getting married, which wasn’t very customary for women of _any_ religion. It wasn’t a decision I took lightly, and I talked about it at length both with my parents and with Sofiane, but I stand by it. I don’t think any particular last name is what makes a family, I’ve seen firsthand how familial bonds can be forged beyond blood, and selfishly, I wanted to keep my own last name because Imane Bakhellal was who I had been most successful as. Imane Bakhellal was the black Muslim girl who’d somehow managed one of the most iconic bands to ever live.

In a more shallow sense, I liked how Imane Bakhellal sounded better than Imane Alaoui anyway.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

It was her right to go by whatever name she chose. I know it’s a tradition dating back to I don’t even know how long ago, but I’ve never seen what the fuss is over taking a man’s last name in marriage. I would have taken her last name, honestly, but she said she didn’t need that from me to know my commitment to her.

As far as our kids went, we decided hyphenating their names would be best. It might be a mouthful, but no more of a mouthful than any of our friends and their combined names. If Alexia and Noée had kids, they likely would have been Martineau-Daucet, which is definitely harder to say than Bakhellal-Alaoui. 

Sometimes, between the four of us, we’d combine them further, like some sort of tongue twister. The Bakhellalaoui’s. It had a nice rhythm to it. 

**Sana Bakhellal-Alaoui (daughter, Imane Bakhellal and Sofiane Alaoui):**

My parents always say that I took after my Mom, and Elias took after my Dad. I think Elias took after Uncle Idriss more than my Dad, but maybe he was a mix of the two. When I was younger, I’d get so annoyed with constant comparisons to my mother, especially from adults, but when I grew up I realized just how high of a compliment those comparisons were. 

If I’ve ended up anything like her, I’ll take that as a win.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Everyone always says Sana is just like me, but I disagree. She’s like me in a lot of ways, but she inherited a lot of Sofiane’s kindness too. I can be kind when I want to be, and I love people fiercely, but Sofiane just has this inherent goodness I don’t see in many people. Sana got that goodness, though, and _that’s_ what makes her unstoppable, not whatever she inherited from me. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

My niece and nephew are what made me want to have kids. I started dating someone more seriously for the first time in my life while Imane was pregnant with Elias, and I think that was part of what made me take this relationship more seriously. I wasn’t as young as I once was, and I didn’t want my life to pass me by with only awards to my name. 

Don’t get me wrong, the awards weren’t bad, not at all, but I wanted a family to share those wins with, a family to create new wins of our own.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Idriss ended up marrying Jamila, my friend who’d shot the cover for _Fifteen Minutes of Fame_. I couldn’t even be mad at him for marrying one of my friends, because I’d married his best friend.

I’d mostly been surprised, when they started dating, because Idriss was full of bullshit and I was sure that Jamila would see past it. Turns out that she did, but that was what made them work so well. It was nice seeing her more often again, we rekindled our friendship more and more as their relationship got more and more serious. 

**Jamila Bakhellal (photographer; wife, Idriss Bakhellal):**

I was just as surprised about falling in love with Idriss as Imane was. Never in a million years would I have foreseen that happening. But sometimes Allah places the right person in your path at the right time, and you just have to follow that path to wherever it may lead. 

I’ve never regretted following that path, not for one second. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Sometimes I forgot that I was famous, because I wasn’t in the news often, but when Jamila and I started dating it was on the front page. People are weirdly obsessed with celebrity relationships. I guess I should have learned that from spending time with Seven Minutes over the years, but it didn’t really sink in until it was me under that spotlight.

Thankfully, the media attention died down fairly quickly, and Jamila didn’t seem to mind it all that much. She’s always been above it all in a way that I could only ever try to be. I never quite managed it, but Jamila was— and is— a pro.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Things were good for a while, great even. Sofiane was still working with Eliott, who was just perpetually blessed to be successful in anything and everything he tried to do, and I was working with Daphné and Manon. Each of their careers required entirely different styles of management, but I liked a challenge. 

Oddly enough, parenting was the easy part through it all. Maybe Sofiane had a point when he talked about how I’d basically parented the band for ten years. 

Then, of course, in 2001, things changed for us, Sana and I in particular. I don’t want to go into details about all the hate and prejudice and racism and Islamophobia we’ve faced since then, because a lot of it is too horrible for me to want to relive, but even though I’ve faced all of those things through my entire life, after that time it was different. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

All I’d ever wanted was to love and protect my family from any hurt that might come their way, but even I was powerless. It still frustrates me to this day. That’s the only time I’ve truly felt any sense of hate build up inside me, at how anyone could treat people the way they treated my family.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I’d won four Academy Awards at that point, and I’d been nominated for countless others, but all of a sudden I was losing jobs and getting threats sent to me daily. Our family had to move to make sure we were safe, even if our kids were too young to really understand why. 

It was bullshit, and it still _is_ bullshit that things like this are still happening to my family, to Imane’s, and to countless others all across the world. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it a million times more, hate doesn’t come from religion, it comes from fear. We can only hope that love and acceptance prevails over hate and fear. Maybe not in my lifetime, but hopefully in my children or grandchildren’s.

**Elias Bakhellal-Alaoui (son, Imane Bakhellal and Sofiane Alaoui):**

I didn’t entirely understand things, being as young as I was, but it all lingers into my life even now, as I’m in my late twenties. I really don’t know how Sana did it, going to school every day and having to face all of that from teachers and students alike. I had it bad in some ways, but never as bad as her.

**Sana Bakhellal-Alaoui:**

I’ve come out of everything I’ve faced stronger than I was before, but that doesn’t mean I deserved to face it. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

What really saved us from falling too deep into whatever darkness was trying to consume us was having a big family that understood one another implicitly, from my parents, to the four of us, to Idriss and Jamila and their four kids.

Things did get better with time, as things always did, and for the last ten or so years I’ve been able to exhale, bit by bit. I still worry every day, more for my kids than myself, but I know that they’re stronger than anyone gives them credit for, including myself. 

Sana just got engaged, actually to a young man named Yousef who reminds me quite a bit of Sofiane in his kindness and pure, unadulterated love for my daughter. As long as she’s happy, I’m happy. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

Sana gets annoyed when I get protective of her and thinks its very anti-feminist of me, but I swear to her, and to you now, that I get just as protective of Elias. He just doesn’t make as much of a fuss about it, he’s the baby, he likes to be babied sometimes.

_(Sofiane laughs)_

Don’t tell him I said that, he’ll deny it to his last breath. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

It took a while, with some of them, but I still keep in touch with everyone from the band, albeit some more than others. No matter how they parted from one another, they know that I’ve only ever had their best interests at heart, even now. 

It’s always good to catch up, see how things are, plan times to see one another. It’s much easier to do nowadays than it would have been back in the eighties, I’ll tell you that. One text to Basile and he can just up and check his calendar for the best day to meet up. Of course, Manon and Daphné are obligated to take my calls, even if they’d prefer to ignore them. Basile keeps trying to get me to check out his daughter Claire’s band, but I’m not falling back into that trap again. I’ve had enough messy bands to last a lifetime. 

Doesn’t mean I won’t put in a good word with a good record label, though. 

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

It feels like so much has changed in the time since we’ve met, or even before that to when I met Eliott, but it also feels, sometimes, like nothing has. Like we’re still navigating our twenties while trying to figure out how to make a group of eight disasters into the greatest band the world has ever seen. Imane gets most of the credit for that, of course, she led them through two whole albums before I even got involved, but my time with Eliott as a solo artist counts for something, as short lived as it was. 

It’s still strange to me to reconcile the boy I’d met back in 1980 with the one I see now in 2020, whenever we have the chance to meet. It’s a good kind of strange though, I think.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Maybe they’d be nothing without me, or maybe they’d still be together to this day, I’ll never know. But what I do know is that I wouldn’t be _me_ without them. They gave me some of the best years of my life, as trying as they could be at times. All is fair in love and rock and roll, I guess.

Now, if you don’t mind, when you see him tell Lucas to return my damn calls, I am _not_ letting Eliott cook dinner when we go to visit next weekend. That’s a fate I wouldn’t even wish on Charles Munier. Well… actually… 

**Arthur Broussard:**

What have I been up to since 1990? The better question is what _haven’t_ I been up to. You might have gathered that I’m a lot less bitter than I was back then, but I’ve also always held grudges like no one’s business, so there’s always that. 

So what have I done? For starters, burned down Charles’ mansion, joined a cult, became a black belt in the art of taekwondo, got married eight times— 

_(Arthur laughs)_

Ok, I’m joking, obviously. Wishful thinking, in some cases, but alas, Charles’ mansion is still standing. I heard he almost got committed for tax fraud a while back, but he’s still kicking so I can only assume he used daddy’s money to get a slap on the wrist. Typical.

Life doesn’t always work out the way we always hoped it would, frankly. I know this very well. But sometimes, the things that you think are the end of the world… well, they just aren’t.

I wish I could tell twenty eight year old me that, but maybe I wouldn’t have ended up where I am if I hadn’t dealt with the things that I did. 

I pretty much cut off contact with everyone in the band for a little while, even Baz, who didn’t deserve that. He’d been nothing but loving and supportive to me since we were in high school, but I just couldn’t deal with anyone or anything for a while. 

I moved about as far away as I could think to move, to the Netherlands. The only reason I chose to move there was because I spun a globe and went where my finger landed. Technically, the first time I did it, my finger landed in the middle of the pacific, and because I wasn’t a merman, that wasn’t very useful.

Did I know how to speak Dutch? Nope, but I could only hope that enough because either spoke English or ASL for me to be able to get by. Now that I wasn’t in an industry that relied so heavily on sound, I found myself reveling in the silence more and more often. I felt like I was finding myself, who I was really meant to be, instead of who I’d been for so long.

I moved in with a guy named Ralph Hansen, who reminded me a lot of Mika, actually. Apparently he’d been looking for a roommate since one of his other friends had left to move in with her boyfriend.

Thankfully, Ralph spoke English probably better than I did, so it wasn’t difficult living with him. He knew who I was, of course, everyone knew who I was, but we hadn’t been as popular in the Netherlands as in other places across the world, so it felt like I was back during either our first or second album era, where everyone knew who we were but they weren’t absolutely obsessed. 

**Ralph Hansen (former roommate, Arthur Broussard):**

I didn’t know who Arthur was when he contacted me about living with me. He gave me his name, but I didn’t know what his last name was, so I was shocked when a world famous drummer showed up at my door. I asked if the rest of the band was hiding in his suitcase, but he said the band was over, which was news to me.

I didn’t know what the rules for living with a famous person were, so I just treated him like I’d have treated anyone that decided to move in with me, unless he told me otherwise.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I felt so… normal. It was weird, very different from what I was used to, but I liked it a lot. I didn’t play the drums at all anymore, but I didn’t really want to. I was in a weird limbo where some days I would miss it more than anything, and some days I would hardly care at all. 

Getting away was good for me, though, I think. If I’d stayed in LA I might have said or done things I shouldn’t have, been vindictive in ways I couldn’t come back from. I still couldn’t talk about Lucas, not by name, but I could tell Ralph that I’d fallen in love with a boy who treated my feelings like they were nothing and how I still didn’t know how to come back from that.

**Ralph Hansen:**

Arthur was dealing with a lot of emotional turmoil when he came to live with me. Luckily for him, I consider myself to be a guru of sorts, so he was in good hands. If there was anything I knew about, it was boy problems. He never told me the identity of this boy he was so hung up on, but it had to have been someone very close to him, to affect him this way.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I didn’t like myself much anymore, and maybe that was spurred by Lucas not liking me enough, so Ralph encouraged me to go out into the world and experience all facets of life in a new way, with no name or person holding me back. 

It hadn’t been long enough that people wouldn’t recognize me wherever I went, but I indulged him, went to a club with him one night. One of his friends, Janna, was the DJ, an she was pretty fucking great. I mean, I had my hearing aids out practically the entire night, but the crowd didn’t stop dancing once, which had to count for something. I met a lot of his other friends, and they all seemed exceptionally nice. A lot of them reminded me of my bandmates back home, which made my chest twinge a bit with regret that I’d left them all behind without so much as a second thought, but I knew I wasn’t ready to go back, not yet. 

It was like when I’d gone completely deaf again, in a way, that uncertainty of where my life was supposed to go from here. I’d probably have a place in the public eye, if I wanted it, but I didn’t know if I did. 

Instead of dwelling too much on any of it, I decided to let go, and just do what felt right. What felt right was dancing like I hadn’t a care in the world, drinking until my vision was blurry, and stumbling home at four in the morning with people whose names I’d only learned hours before. 

I was there for a year before I contacted anyone from home. I don’t know what drove me to do it, but I called my mom. It was entirely possible that their number had changed in the eleven years since I’d left, and it was also possible she’d hang up once she heard my voice, but I missed her. A lot.

She picked up, and she stayed on the phone, and she told me everything that had happened in her life since I’d become a rockstar. I felt terrible I hadn’t been there for her through any of it, and I was shocked to hear about my father and Emma’s mother. I wondered if Emma knew, and I didn’t know whether to be mad at her or not if she did. 

She’d been waiting for me to call, she said, for a while. She didn’t think the day would ever come that she heard my voice on the other line, but she hoped, regardless. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed her until I heard her voice. I started crying, and I couldn’t stop, and she comforted me through it all. 

Everything that had happened in my life since I’d last seen her came pouring out at rapid speed. She knew some of it, the publicized things, because she’d kept up with my life to the best of her ability, always cheering me on, but she didn’t know the gritty details. Some gritty details I kept to myself, like when Lucas had a minor coke problem during the first tour, or the details of what had gone down with Manon and Charles, but I told her the brunt of it, not even caring if she judged me. It felt like such a relief, to talk to my mom, so hear that kind of love radiate from her every pore over the phone. 

She… I forgot that she didn’t know about my hearing. I mean, it was pretty accessible news that I was deaf, but she didn’t know how I’d lost the hearing in my left ear, and I felt like it was the right time to tell her. Maybe it would have been better in person, but she wasn’t with my dad anymore. I didn’t know if he’d hurt her before, but I wanted to make sure she knew that there was nothing she could have done. People like that don’t deserve our breath. 

She felt awful still, and I knew I couldn’t stop her from feeling it, but I tried my best to assure her that none of it was her fault, and that I’d found a home in the deaf community just as I had with my bandmates. I thought it was time to get back to that community, the one I’d all but abandoned once I got my hearing aids and kept making music like nothing had changed. Everything had changed, and I was only then accepting it. Yes, I’d learned sign language, and I tried to make our concerts more accessible to a wider variety of people, but I still acted like I was a part of the hearing community because I felt like I was lost somewhere in the middle. The name sign Noée had given me, it meant ‘between two worlds’. I thought it was fitting, but I only then realized that being between two worlds didn’t have to be a bad thing, whether it be with my deafness or my sexuality, or whatever else. 

Ralph was my guru in many ways, yes, but my mom was really the driving force in allowing me to remember who I was, and what kind of life I wanted to live. She made me brave, braver than I’d ever been before, and after I hung up with her I called Alexia. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

He called me so I could sign to Noée. This was the first I’d heard from him in over a year, and all he barely gave me a hello, just got right to the point. I expected him to be angry, but he sounded… balanced, like he’d found some clarity wherever he was. I didn’t really know anything about what had been going on with him and Lucas, only knew that Lucas was over at our place a lot before the Grammys and then all of a sudden Eliott and Lucas were back together and Arthur left the country. It didn’t take a genius to start putting the pieces together, but I doubted any of the involved parties would share what _exactly_ went down anytime soon. 

He told Noée that he wanted to come out, and he wanted her to be the one to write an article about it. 

**Noée Daucet:**

I was surprised, definitely. Not only that he wanted to come out and have me write about it, but also that he was calling at all. I mean, I hoped I’d see him again, he was one of my best friends, but I also wouldn’t have thought it out of character for him to leave everything and everyone behind because he was scared of what might come next. I didn’t know if he’d ever make it past that fear without his friends by his side, but it seemed I’d underestimated him. I was glad that I had. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I had clarity, for the first time in a long time. I was ready to face the life I’d left behind and turn it into a legacy I’d be proud to remember.

**Ralph Hansen:**

Arthur left after about a year and a half. He said that he’d be back, because he’d felt more at home here than he had anywhere for a long time, but I didn’t know if that was a promise that would be kept or not. I knew his life was going places, different places than when he’d been in a rock band, but places that suited him a bit better. I could only hope that we’d keep in touch, but I’d have understood if he didn’t.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I kept in touch with all the friends I’d made during my time in the Netherlands, of course I did. One of Ralph’s friends, Lucas, — shut up, I know— I’d really hit it off with. We spent a lot of time together and it was like the entire world fell away while he was around, you know? Being around him made me miss Baz, actually, because our dynamic felt a lot like that unbreakable wall of comfort and support I had with Baz. There was just something a little deeper to it, something I didn’t dwell too much on for quite a bit of time. 

**Basile Savary:**

Arthur called me when he came back to LA and I was too happy that he was there to be mad at him for leaving without a trace for nearly two years. I had so much to catch him up on, so many things I wanted to do with him, so many stories to share. 

I wondered if he’d been talking to anyone else or knew what they were up to at all, and I wondered if it was my place to say. In the end I kept the conversation about myself and about himself, because I didn’t want to bring out old wounds that might not have healed yet.

**Arthur Broussard:**

No, some of the old wounds hadn’t healed. They’d lessened, in my chest, and I didn’t carry the grudges and bitterness like I had when I left, but they were still there. At least, there enough that I didn’t feel like talking to Lucas or Eliott anytime soon. Manon or Daphné either, which I know was sort of petty, but they were both so close to Lucas and Eliott that I didn’t want to deal with that either. 

**Basile Savary:**

He told me that he was going to come out and Noée was going to do a spread on it. I was excited for him, he seemed so sure of himself that it was infectious.

**Arthur Broussard:**

A small, petty part of me wanted Lucas to see me coming out to the whole world on the front of a magazine cover and feel some sort of shame, for the part of himself he was still hiding. I feel terrible for even saying that, because everyone’s journey to either come out or not is their own thing, and I really have no right to judge, at least on that front, but it’s the truth. I wanted him to know how sure I was of every aspect of my identity, and know that my strength didn’t have to come from his validation, it came from _me_. 

**Noée Daucet:**

The interview was fairly simple, I basically just let him detail his experiences and what led him to this discovery of himself. What being bisexual meant to him, how his sexuality informed his approaches to life and art, that sort of thing. 

He had a lot to say, and I was happy to take it all in. I knew he’d asked me to be a part of this because he trusted me, and I’d do everything in my power to make sure he knew his trust was not misplaced. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

We pulled together a DIY cover shoot. Noée was still working for Rolling Stone, but she also did some independent work, so we didn’t know which magazine would run this story. It was possible Rolling Stone wouldn’t want to risk their reputation. Sure, they’d had Bowie and Freddie Mercury on their covers countless times, but that was different, we knew that. They were icons like Lucas was, not me.

**Alexia Martineau:**

I’m a master of all, I pulled off the best makeshift photoshoot ever. I’m also bi, so I had that aesthetic covered. 

We did some shots with rainbow lighting, because the bi flag and other flags hadn’t been created yet, so I just worked with some of the LGBTQ+ symbolism that was already out there. I wish that we could have done it with some sick purple, blue, and pink lighting, but of course it was six more years before that flag debuted. 

We made sure to emphasize _bisexual_ about a million times over, though, because that word was often treated like it was invisible, just like the sexuality. It still is these days, to an extent, but not like it was back then. 

**Noée Daucet:**

To all of our mutual surprise, Rolling Stone wanted to run the story, so we let them. I made sure my words weren’t edited, but then it was a waiting game. The public reception to Manon and Daphné had been greater than anticipated, same with Eliott, but that was all either at or pretty close to the height of their fame. Arthur had been far from the spotlight for two years, there was a possibility people wouldn’t care, or they’d care too much, in the wrong way.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I was a little nervous, I admit, but I stood by it. I was proud to wear my love on my sleeve and to live freely, finally. 

Once the story hit stands, things went crazy. There were people who didn’t want to hear it, or hated me for it, but a lot more people than I expected were excited and on my side. I liked this feeling, of having a cause worth fighting for, and that’s sort of how I fell into activism. 

There were so many issues in the LGBTQ+ community and the deaf community that I’d neglected to take a part of, but I wanted to now. I wanted people to know that things that made them ‘different’ weren’t things to run away from. I’d tried that, and it was an awful, lonely life to live. 

My friend Lucas from the Netherlands called me after the magazine came out to tell me how proud of me he was, and how he wished that someday he could be that brave. He told me that he was gay, and that he’d felt like he’d been fighting a losing battle with himself for so long, but recently he’d been filled with hope that had never been there before.

Maybe I was just emotional, but I asked him to leave the Netherlands and come to LA and work with me, raising awareness and positivity for various causes. He was worried about uprooting his life, which I understood, but sometimes you just had to do crazy things, mix up your entire life, to find out where you were meant to be.

I didn’t expect him to do it, honestly, it was just a spur of the moment thought I’d had, but about a month later, there he was, looking out of place but ready for whatever life had to throw at him. I might have started falling for him then, but I suspect it started a lot earlier than that.

**Lucas van der Heijden (husband, Arthur Broussard):**

I know that it’s always been a bit of a sore spot, but I often make fun of Arthur for having a type defined by a name instead of any physical attributes or personality traits. He had a thing for Lucases, I’m just glad he ended up picking the right one.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I still retained my celebrity status, oddly enough. I wasn’t doing anything to constitute it, but a lot of causes want a face or a spokesperson to provide ethos for their work, and I was more than happy to do that. I never have, and never will, think that i’m the supreme authority on LGBTQ+ issues or deafness, and I’m well aware that I’ve had an easier go of it than most people, but if I can be a figurehead to give some sort of ‘credibility’ to these important groups, I’d do it with pride. 

Lucas fell into it just as easily as I did, and I honestly think he’s a lot more charismatic than I am, but he wasn’t the famous one, so I did the talking most of the time. He didn’t seem to mind. 

**Lucas van der Heijden:**

I won’t lie, some of the activism was intimidating sometimes. I’ve always been more introverted, prone to being alone and revelling in that time to myself. In this world, you were never alone, and things were never quiet. Arthur told me, one time, how lucky he felt, to have the power to engage with it all or to simply block everything out and sit in complete silence for as long as he wanted. I thought it was beautiful, the way he put it. I thought a lot of things about him were beautiful.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I started dating Lucas in ‘95, which is honestly way later than we should have started dating, but we were both too oblivious to believe that we were slowly falling in love with one another and too scared to make the first move.

Eventually it was Basile who practically set us up. Well, maybe that’s not the right wording. Forced us together? Basically, he told us that we were both stupid as hell not to ser that we were in love with one another, and if we didn’t do something about it right then, he was going to lock us in a room together until we did. 

Needless to say, we did something about it. 

I’d long given up on finding the love of my life, because I thought that had been Lucas [Lallemant], but then fate decided to give me a slap in the face, and I started believing again, because I was pretty sure I’d gotten it right this time. 

**Lucas van der Heijden:**

The Netherlands was the first country to legalize same sex marriage, in 2001, so I proposed to Arthur around the holidays of that year. I never wanted to be without him, I knew that he was the person I’d been put on this planet to love. 

He said yes, and the rest is history. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

Our relationship was fairly publicized, mainly because of my position in activism and who I’d been in my past life— that is, during my time with the band— so it was a big deal when Luc and I got engaged. We planned to get married in the Netherlands, not only because it was the only place in the world we could, but also because it was Luc’s home, and the place that I’d found myself again.

I invited everyone from the band to the wedding, even Lucas and Eliott. It seemed silly to still hold a grudge when I now had a better life than I’d ever dreamed of. I felt fulfilled in ways I never knew needed fulfillment. It was nice. 

**Lucas van der Heijden:**

Everyone from Seven Minutes in Heaven showed up to the wedding, even Lucas Lallemant and Eliott Demaury. By then I knew Arthur’s whole history with the band, of course, and I was honestly surprised they’d shown up. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

It was weird to see how many of my old bandmates had kids now. Not that I hadn’t met most of them, but it was still weird seeing them all in one place like that. Imane and Sofiane’s kids were as cute as ever, and I felt bad for not keeping in touch with them more. They’d done more for me than anyway, I probably owed them a lot more than I’d ever given them.

My mom walked me down the aisle, because my dad wasn’t invited. Luc’s parents were both dead, so Ralph walked with him. I do wish I’d had a chance to meet them. I know Luc had a complicated relationship with his parents, but if I knew anything, it was the many meanings of ‘complicated’. And I knew there was a lot of love there, underneath it all, so I think that maybe we all would have had a good relationship had they both still been around. 

**Lucas van der Heijden:**

Our wedding was the best day of my life. It still is. There was some press there, because it was a big deal that we were getting married, but press really meant Noée, so I didn’t mind it much.

**Arthur Broussard:**

It didn’t hit me until later that that had been the first time the band was all together in one place since the Grammys in 1990. Twelve years, but somehow we’d all made it there. Lucas and Eliott barely stayed for the reception, which I expected, and Daphné and Manon were quick to follow, but I _had_ made it happen, sort of by accident. 

It was a magical day for many reasons, and that was one of them to me. 

**Ralph Hansen:**

Both of my babies, all grown up… I’ve never been prouder.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Arthur had earned his happiness in a multitude of ways, and it really was beautiful to be able to be there to see him embrace it.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I’m afraid there’s not much else of significance to recount past that point. It’s funny, that it's almost been twenty years, and I have hardly anything to say about that time when I went on a long ass rant about a few months between ‘89 and ‘90, but I guess that’s what happens when you find your peace in life. 

I kept doing what I loved with who I loved, and I actually picked the drums back up, as a hobby of sorts. I tried to teach Luc to play but he was horrendous at it, even with months of practice. Instead he learned sign language, and we both learned how to love a life half spent in silence. 

We never had kids, never wanted them. I was perfectly fine being an uncle to Baz’s kids, cool uncle had always been more appealing to me anyway. Luc felt the same way, and he was arguably a cooler uncle than I could ever hope to be.

**Lucas van der Heijden:**

Kids have always loved me. Arthur was cooler with the teen crowd, but the kids loved me the most. We did discuss having our own, via surrogate or adoption, but we knew that process would be near impossible for a couple in a same sex relationship and neither of us really wanted to be dads in general, so we held off, and I don’t regret that decision one bit. 

Alexia and Noée never had kids either, so we had some fun times, the four of us, while all our other friends were at Disneyland or wherever the fuck with screaming toddlers. We still do have some fun times, the four of us. 

**Arthur Broussard:**

I didn’t think I’d ever make it here, especially not when I left the band with no plans other than getting as far away from Lucas Lallemant as possible. I’m not mad at him anymore, we’ve made our peace with one another, but I don’t think we’ll ever be friends like we were way back when. But that’s fine, I think. People grow up and grow apart and hurt each other and make their way back, and we did all of that, we just didn’t need to make it _all_ the way back. It’s better that way for both of us, honestly. 

He knows this, but for what it’s worth, I forgive him. I would never have met Luc without him, and I might never have even left the band and discovered this new path in life that I still, to this day, love more than anything. I won’t go so far as to say that I have to thank him for breaking my heart into pieces, chewing it up, spitting it out, and stomping on it for good measure, but I don’t harbor any ill will towards him or Eliott.

We’re all just a bunch of fucked up people trying to live our lives, it's all we’ve ever been. It’s only natural to get lost a bunch along the way until we find the one road that leads us to our destiny. If you believe in all that destiny bullshit. I don’t and I do, because Lucas is my soulmate, but I also know that life is just a series of choices we make, and we’ll never know which are the right ones, but it doesn’t really matter, because at the end of all, the right ones are the ones we made anyway, even when they hurt so badly we thought our lives were over, and the good ones, and all the others in between.

That’s why I don’t regret a minute of the life I’ve lived so far, even as I regret so much of it every day. Does that make sense?

_(Arthur laughs)_

Probably not, but that’s ok. All that matters is that we live and love, everything in between is a series of delightfully stupid and awful and perfect bullshit. 

**Emma Borgès (keyboardist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

After the Grammys, when Yann and I were back in the same house, we tried to focus on parenthood to the best of our ability. Thankfully, of everyone in the band, we’d been the ones with the most stable upbringings, so we weren’t as lost as we could have been.

Yann was freaking out more than I was, which seemed to be the opposite of the way it should have been, but what did I have to worry about, really? I’d only had one appointment so far, but as far as they could tell the baby was healthy, I was healthy, and I pretty much had access to anything I could ever need to make sure this turned out alright.

I didn’t think about the fact that we’d have to tell the media, or that they’d even care, but our fame hadn’t disappeared over night. Everyone thought that we would get back together, so they were still interested in our lives. 

**Yann Cazas (bassist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I was just perpetually frazzled. I worried about Emma all the time, worried about the baby, worried about the careers we’d left behind, worried about the friends we hadn’t talked to in weeks. Imane and Sofiane knew about the baby, obviously, and I think Emma told Daphné and Manon when we weren’t together, but no one else knew. And yes, technically, we still weren’t together, but it was the same sort of not together that had started our whole mess anyways, minus the sex. Ok, so we were just friends then, I guess, but I knew I still had feelings for her, and I knew she wouldn’t have agreed to raise a child with me if she didn’t still have _some_ feelings for me too. 

I wanted to tell the boys, and I don’t think Emma would have cared, but I didn’t know where I stood with all of them. Baz was Baz, I could tell him immediately and he’d be over at our place within minutes yelling his excitement. He wasn’t the one I was worried about. I still wasn’t talking to Lucas, which felt kind of petty of me, but I also was too stubborn to fold. He really hadn’t done anything wrong, the more I thought about it, but then my resolve turned from pettiness to shame. He didn’t deserve me icing him out like that, but I didn’t know how to say so. Since Eliott and Lucas were clearly a package deal once again, that meant I couldn’t talk to Eliott either. And Arthur, who’d had my back in a somewhat misguided way, had up and disappeared. No one knew where he went or why or when he’d be back. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I still talked with the girls all the time, including Imane and Alexia. Alexia was the only one who didn’t know I was pregnant yet, but I figured I’d have to tell her fairly soon because it would be pretty obvious in the near future. I just didn’t want to tell her before I told Baz, Lucas, and Arthur. We’d been friends, family, really, for so long, I wanted them to know first. Of course, Arthur was nowhere to be found, so I guessed I’d give up on that one if I had to, and Yann still refused to speak to Lucas. In all honesty, I was still pissed at Arthur, so I didn’t care if he was the last to know, but I know Yann felt differently.

In the end we told Baz and Maria first because we knew how easy that would be. It went as expected, and Baz was only upset that we’d beat him to it. Maria didn’t seem so upset by that, though.

_(Emma laughs)_

I’d been pretty chill about everything, but telling more people made it so much more real. I think I was roughly three months along when we told Baz, so I wasn’t showing or anything yet, but, aside from the morning vomiting, I did feel different. It wasn’t a good or bad sort of different, just the type that existed.

**Yann Cazas:**

Emma finally told me that she was going to tell Lucas and Eliott, and I didn’t have to come with her, but she wasn’t going to deal with my fourth grade bullshit anymore, so I figured I’d buck up and deal with it head on. 

It went fine, as Emma probably could have guessed. Eliott was so excited for us he could hardly stand still. He said he’d paint a nursery for us, which was actually a really nice offer because I hadn’t even begun to think about the fact that we’d need a nursery.

Lucas seemed happy, but hesitantly so, like he was waiting for me to dictate how the night went. I pulled him aside and apologized for getting so mad, he didn’t deserve that, he was just trying to be a good friend to Emma. 

He apologized to me too, for keeping it from me, but he said he wasn’t sorry why. He’d made a promise to Emma and frankly, he’d been dealing with enough of his own relationship shit to get involved with someone else's. I understood that.

**Emma Borgès:**

Yann and Lucas could never be mad at each other very long. It was just a matter of getting over their idiotic sense of pride enough to actually talk about it. Honestly, if I’ve learned anything from my time with the band, it's that communication solves literally everything. Would have been nice to learn it sooner, but I got there eventually, that’s what matters. 

We told Alexia a week or so later, and she was super excited for us as well. She was still a producer to the stars, and I couldn’t wait to see what kind of work she did next. 

As far as my work… to be frank I’d forgotten all about working. I still wanted to have _something_ , maybe with music, maybe not, but I figured I could wait until the baby came to figure out what, exactly, that was. I could have lived off the money I’d made in the band for the rest of my life, but it wasn’t about that for me. It was about having a passion, doing what I loved. 

**Yann Cazas:**

I kind of hated that we were as rich as we were. Like, sure, we’d worked for it, we’d earned it, but no one deserved _that_ kind of money. I gave a lot away wherever I could, and there was still so much left over. Emma didn’t get why I was so weird about it, but I’ve always hated being pushed and pulled around my life through the whims of a capitalistic society. Every time you find a new interest the first thing people try to do is make it marketable. What if I just want to paint for fun, or make music without the interest of selling it to anyone? What then?

**Emma Borgès:**

I’m genuinely surprised our kid didn’t turn out to be a mini comrade. I understood what Yann was always saying, though, for the most part, and I commended his passion. It _was_ all a bit ironic to me, given our financial status, but hey, at least he was trying to walk the walk the way he talked the talk.

**Yann Cazas:**

We went back to Minnesota after the appointment where we found out the sex of the baby, because we both decided we wanted to wait to tell our families until we knew and have it be a big surprise for them.

**Emma Borgès:**

Yann, Alexia, and Eliott were always the ones that said _oh, don’t forget, gender is just a construct, so the sex on the scan really means nothing_ , which I appreciated, as far as open mindedness goes, but I got the point after the third time they said something. I didn’t care about gender or sex or whatever at all, as long as the baby was healthy.

I told my mom Patrick wasn’t allowed to come, when Yann and I visited, which she didn’t seem too happy about but I fucking hated Arthur’s dad so I didn’t give a shit. Yann’s family was the best, though, as always. 

It was quite a bit harder for me to hide the fact that I was pregnant at that point, for obvious reasons, but we told them all at dinner the first night we were there, so I only had to deal with questions about my weight for a few hours. 

**Yann Cazas:**

My mom cared way more about the fact that Emma and I weren’t married than I’d anticipated. I knew that it wasn’t very traditional, to be planning to raise a child the way that we were, but I lied and said that we were back together for real, and that we just didn’t believe in marriage. My mom didn’t like that either, but she was glad we were back together. Which, you know, we weren’t.

**Emma Borgès:**

Yann cornered me after dinner in a panic. He said that his mom was upset we weren’t married— to which I probably said who gives a fuck, because who gives a fuck— and that he may have said we were back together in an attempt to appease her. Not the best thing to say to someone whose hormones are all out of wack twenty-four seven.

**Yann Cazas:**

She started crying, but then she got really angry, until she ultimately agreed to pretend we were still together, for the sake of my parents. And for the media. They hadn’t found out about the baby yet, but it was only a matter of time, and they’d already started reporting on us being seen together in various places once again. We hadn’t discussed it yet, but on our way home we decided to keep up the charade in front of the cameras. 

**Emma Borgès:**

My mom was ultimately supportive, but she did have similar views to Yann’s mom about bringing a child into the world outside of the confines of marriage or whatever. I told her she didn’t have any right to preach to me about morality given that she’d had an affair with a married man who also happened to be one of my best friend’s parents. That was pretty much the end of the conversation. 

I liked visiting with family, but it was very nice to get back to LA. 

**Yann Cazas:**

We’d only been there for a weekend, but it was long enough, in both good and bad ways. Neither of us said a word on the plane ride home, lost in thoughts, and I wondered if some of what our parents had said was getting to her. But then she took my hand in hers and held it like that for the rest of the flight, smiling softly at me as she did so, and I knew we were going to be alright.

Time flew by after that, more than I’d expected it to. It seemed like we had so many things to do and no time to prepare for them.

**Emma Borgès:**

Time did _not_ fly by after the visit to Minnesota. Try being heavily pregnant in the dead of an LA summer, just try it, I dare you. Not very fun. Anywhere with air conditioning was my best friend. The media knew, pretty much immediately once we got back, and the only statement we gave was to say that we were back together. People had a lot to say about all of it, but I’d gotten good at tuning it all out.

Our friends knew we weren’t back together, but sometimes I think they didn’t believe us. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

We all had a bet going, on whether or not Yann and Emma were actually back together. Lucas maintained that they weren’t, I said that they were, and everyone else fell somewhere in between. Noée said that they weren’t together but they were definitely fucking again. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I was horny, sue me. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Like I was going to say no when Emma asked if we could try ‘friends with a side of fucking’ again. I was all the way back in love with her again, and I’d take what I could get. I was aware that this was what led to our falling out in the first place, but right off the bat I said that I would on the condition that we were still exclusive. There didn’t have to be any romance involved, but I didn’t want her, or myself, with other people. She looked at me like I was insane and asked me who the hell I thought she’d be fucking while six months pregnant, which, fair enough.

**Emma Borgès:**

I knew he still loved me, and I wasn’t sure if keeping him at arm's length was the best option or not, but it felt right at the time, so I went with my gut. Neither of us knew what was going to happen, but that was ok. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Emma had the fucking weirdest pregnancy cravings. If I ever have to see cherries and mayonnaise again it will be too soon.

**Emma Borgès:**

The cherries were sweet and the mayo was a bit salty, I stand by it. I’d dip the cherries in mayo and Yann would look at me like I’d grown a second head, and I wouldn’t care because was he the one with a full human inside him? No. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Fries from McDonalds, but only the short, crispy ones, pink lemonade by the gallon, chocolate chip cookie dough with strawberry flavored ice cream, lucky charms just just the marshmallows doused in chocolate syrup instead of milk…

**Emma Borgès:**

The best part of the later stages of pregnancy was the fact that I could use my belly as an extra table. It made the back pain worth it. Well… maybe.

**Yann Cazas:**

…pistachios and whipped cream, raw potatoes, soy sauce but like, in beverage form— I vetoed that one, that couldn’t have been good in terms of sodium intake—, hummus mixed in with rice and chicken, the cream inside the middle of oreos, burgers with pineapple, guacamole, and ranch dressing… 

**Emma Borgès:**

Ok, some of my cravings were a bit weird, I’ll admit, but I do stand by the cherries in mayo, for what it’s worth.

**Yann Cazas:**

About a week before he was born, time slowed down again. Maybe it was because we were anticipating it, or maybe it was because we’d finally accomplished all we’d set out to do before the baby came, but whatever the case, days ran like flies in amber.

**Emma Borgès:**

Daphné was very concerned about what day the baby would come, because it was the difference between having a virgo or a libra. I knew enough about astrology because Alexia and Daphné were very into it, but I didn’t really think it’d make a difference one way or another.

He ended up being a libra, though, for those who care.

I wish I could say it was a calm, peaceful day, but it hurt like hell, I screamed a lot, and Yann’s hand was almost broken in the process. It was worth it, though.

**Yann Cazas:**

We named him Sékou. 

**Emma Borgès:**

Not to flex, but of all of our friends, _we_ had the most perfect kid. Like, I swear, Sékou was the easiest kid to raise ever. Maybe it was some good karma to counteract all the crazy shit we’d dealt with in our lives pre-kid.

**Sékou Borgès-Cazas (son, Emma Borgès and Yann Cazas):**

Most people would have thought it was weird that my parents were together but not together, but I guess I didn’t. I didn’t really know any different, and Uncle Baz and Aunt Maria were the only ones of my parents friends who had a traditional sort of relationship. Aunt Imane and Uncle Sofiane too, but they were also different because they were just inherently cooler than everyone. Dad doesn’t like it when I say that, because he thinks he’s cooler than Uncle Sofiane, but my Dad can’t dance like Uncle Sofiane can.

**Yann Cazas:**

Sékou _always_ says that I can’t dance. But I can! I can dance very well, thank you very much. Besides, Sékou got his style from me, which I’d say is cooler than dancing.

**Sékou Borgès-Cazas:**

My Dad gave me this yellow turtleneck when I turned eighteen like it was some big cornerstone of his life. I mean, yellow is cool, and vintage came back in style a few years later, but I didn’t see what the big deal was.

**Yann Cazas:**

I gave him _the_ turtleneck. I think that was what made him into the stylish man he is today. 

**Emma Borgès:**

It can be really fucking annoying at times, but Sékou is the smartest person I’ve ever known. He learned how to hack by accident, basically, and he can list historical facts about every place he’s ever been. Yann’s always been smart like that too, so I can see where he got it from. He did inherit some sarcasm from me, which I appreciate greatly.

**Yann Cazas:**

Sékou was so easy to raise that it didn’t even feel like a huge upheaval on our lives to have a kid. We also got together with Manon and Daphné a lot, so Lola and Sékou grew up being good friends. They were very different on many levels, but I think that was what made their friendship work. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I kept playing the piano, and I let myself enjoy it. I didn’t miss playing for a living, though I would have if I hadn’t found anything else. Oddly enough, I started writing. I didn’t mean for it to turn into anything, it was mostly so I’d have some documentation of some of the crazy things that happened in my life, but it expanded beyond that quite a bit.

**Yann Cazas:**

It was the mid nineties when Emma told me she’d written a book. My first thought was _what?_ but I knew she’d been writing a lot, so I guess that made sense. I had no idea what she was writing, I didn’t know if she was maybe writing music or something. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I didn’t really know what to do with a book that probably wasn’t that good, so I talked to Imane. She had two young kids, so maybe it wasn’t the best time, but she seemed all in.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I definitely had never expected to receive a call from Emma saying that she’d written a book and needed my advice on what to do with it. But, I figured if I’d been able to figure out the acting industry in a short period of time, this would be nothing.

**Emma Borgès:**

I’m not naive, I know that Imane got me a book deal because of my name. Apparently, even five years after the band split, it still meant something. Media was always speculating on when Yann and I were getting married, but we both knew it was never going to happen. I honestly don’t even know if we were in a relationship or not. I’ve never liked to put a label on things anyway.

**Yann Cazas:**

I still had the ring, actually, that I’d bought years before when I’d wanted to propose. I was hesitant to sell it back even though I knew that I’d probably never use it. Weirdly, I was fine with that. I don’t know if it was maturity or immaturity that put Emma and I where we were with one another, but it worked really well, and I didn’t want to mess with that. 

**Emma Borgès:**

The book was a thriller murder mystery. The first few years we were raising Sékou, it sort of became a tradition for Yann and I to watch dumb detective shows after he went to bed, and we got super into them. I also read a lot of Stephen King, even back during when we were in the band, so I guess I drew from both of those in what I wrote. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

It wasn’t hard to get Emma a book deal. They knew people would pick up anything with her name on it, so she was a gamble worth taking. Turned out the book fucking rocked, so she got people buying her book that didn’t even know or care about who she was. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Emma’s book was amazing. I won’t say I was shocked, because Emma can be good at anything she sets her mind to, but I was definitely a little surprised.

**Emma Borgès:**

I’d always liked creative writing exercises back in school or whatever, I just liked playing the piano more. But I’d been there, done that, so it was time to try something new. Turned out I liked it a lot, and I wasn’t bad at it. 

I kept writing after that. Somehow I became a New York Times number one bestseller, which was not at all what I’d expected, and people started paying attention to me because of the words I wrote rather than the notes I played. 

It was interesting, being at the front of something for a change. Like, people had cared about me in the band, but only because we were as famous as we were. Otherwise they wouldn’t have looked past Lucas, and sometimes they didn’t anyway. But with this, it was just me. I got all the praise, all the criticism. There was no one to hide behind. I didn’t know if I liked it or not, but I got used to it. Being an author was small potatoes compared to being in a world famous rock band anyway, so it all added up to the intensity of the fame earlier in my musical career. 

**Yann Cazas:**

People had a lot to say about the fact that Emma was doing something and I wasn’t. I didn’t need to, I was a dad and that was the only priority on my mind. It was my favorite job, in a lot of ways. I still plucked away on my bass, of course, because even if I could live without being in a band, I couldn’t live without music.

I couldn’t do much to stand up for her other than to be proud and try to block out the misogynistic forms of criticism. I think Sékou’s first words were ‘fuck the patriarchy’.

_(Yann laughs)_

That's a joke, obviously, though I wouldn’t have been surprised if his _actual_ first words were ‘fuck capitalism’. 

**Emma Borgès:**

Yann should have become a politician or something. Granted, his ideas can be a little more out there than people are used to, but it’s something he’s been so passionate about his whole life, and not a lot of people know it. 

Then again, all politicians are inherently bad, so maybe it’s for the best that he didn’t take that venture on.

**Yann Cazas:**

Hell no. I wouldn’t have gone into politics even if I wanted to. I’d already dealt with a fair bit of scrutiny, I didn’t need the added tension of hundreds of other politicians and millions of citizens just waiting for the right moment to bring out the worst things about you.

**Emma Borgès:**

By the time Sékou went to college, we wondered if we should have had more kids. It had been brought up a couple times, but neither one of us wanted to toe the line of are we together or are we not, so those conversations were always tabled. I really could have gone either way on the matter, and my viewpoint was always that I didn’t want to do it unless we were both absolutely positive. I think Yann thought the same.

**Yann Cazas:**

Even if Sékou didn’t have blood siblings, all of our friends' kids were like his cousins, sisters, brothers, whatever you want to call it, and my sister had three kids as well. He never complained to us about being an only child, not that he ever really complained about much, and years later when we looked back on it we decided that we liked how our lives had worked out.

**Sékou Borgès-Cazas:**

I felt like I had siblings, because my friends always felt like family to me. Even when they get on my nerves or piss me off, I still love them and the time we spend together. Lola and I, as the oldest, were the default parents of the group, which I took to better than she did. But we all worked it out in the end. 

It’s really weird to me, that I’m older now than my parents were when they left the band. It doesn’t seem right. Thirty years of my life, and I feel like it barely even compares to ten of theirs spent playing and touring and falling in and out of love or whatever it was they did. I don’t ask for many details in that respect. I’m sure I’ll learn a lot of things in this documentary that I still don’t know about that time in their lives, and I’m sure there are some things that I know that no one else ever will. 

**Emma Borgès:**

I’m still writing, to this day. About twenty five years at it, and I still could never even imagine reaching the level of success we accomplished in just a few with Seven Minutes in Heaven. But that’s fine with me. I still love it, so I’m going to keep doing it until it's time for me to either retire or find something else to love doing.

**Yann Cazas:**

I took up cooking once Sékou went off to school. I probably should have _before_ then, but I’d always been decent enough to get by. Same with Emma. 

But now I’m really good at it, somehow. I blame it on countless hours watching the food network because I’m too lazy to grab the remote. Ina Garten is my girl. I told Emma that I was going to try out for Food Network Star, and she laughed at me, which was fair, but I genuinely was going to for a time.

_(Yann laughs)_

Then I remembered that the prize was a show on the channel, and I didn’t want to do that, so there went that idea.

Food Network Star or not, I’m happy. I really am, and that’s all I could hope for. 

**Sékou Borgès-Cazas:**

I’ve never known what was going on with my parents relationship status, and I still don’t. Ask them, if you really want to know. 

**Emma Borgès:**

Yann and I? No, we’re not together.

**Yann Cazas:**

Come on, Alexia, Emma and I have been together the whole time. We don’t say it, but we both know deep down that that’s just how it is. I don’t mind the ambiguity, honestly, I think it fits us well.

**Alexia Martineau:**

Noée and I are winning some big money once this comes out, just saying. Technically, we’re both right.

**Emma Borgès:**

I wouldn’t be who I am without Seven Minutes in Heaven or anyone involved, so if there’s one last thing I’m going to say here, it's that.

_(Emma talks off camera)_

_That was all you needed from me, right? Because that was like, a mic drop worthy ending line._

**Yann Cazas:**

It was all worth it. The good and the bad. Everything was worth it. 

**Manon Demissy (lead guitarist, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

Career shifting to acting was harder than anticipated. The actual acting wasn’t the hard bit, it was trying to enter the industry. Luckily, I had Idriss on my side, and he’d won more Oscars than any other actor at that point, so he had a lot of power. Also, Imane was on my side, and there was nothing she couldn’t do. 

I enjoyed all the acting classes I took so much, they all just proved over and over again that this was what I was meant to be doing. I spent most of ‘90 taking classes, even though my instructors told me I could start taking auditions, I wanted to make sure I was totally ready. Plus, I never knew how auditions would turn out, and I wanted to be there when Emma had her baby.

I also wanted to keep my promise to Daphné and help her in raising Lola. I know Daph had her own dreams that she was working on, but Lola was still just a toddler, so she had to be a priority for a little while. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Manon would perform monologues for Lola and I and we were supposed to give her critiques. I couldn’t, because I thought she was perfect, and Lola couldn’t, because she was three. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I bombed my first couple auditions, because my old stage fright that I should have gotten rid of by then liked to rear its ugly head. Then I got an audition for an adaptation of _Emma_ , the Jane Austen novel, as the titular character. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Manon nearly went crazy, rehearsing for that audition.

**Manon Demissy:**

I’d loved Jane Austen’s novels as long as I could remember. I wanted this role like I hadn’t wanted anything in a long time— save Daphné. I rehearsed until I knew every line, not just my own, front to back. I could still do that audition now, if I really wanted to. Some things get ingrained so deeply into your brain that they never leave. 

I got the role. I hadn’t been expecting to, but I got it, and I could hardly contain myself. I was so excited. It wasn’t set to start filming until summertime of ‘91, and it was going to film in Europe. I didn’t want to leave Daphné alone for that time, but I also couldn’t ask her to uproot her own life for a few months to be with me.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I was just writing music, still, at that point. My plans had been put on hold while Imane tried to figure out how to release my music independently and who I would work with to make that happen, so I just wrote and wrote, hoping someday soon I’d be able to make some progress. I knew Manon wanted me to come with her while she was shooting, but she didn’t want to ask, which was ridiculous. What else did I have to do? Of course I’d rather spend my time in Europe with her and Lola.

**Manon Demissy:**

Turned out I didn’t have to ask. She offered to come with, and I was more than happy to accept. That summer was like something out of a storybook. Not only was I living out a dream I didn’t even know I had, but I was also doing it with the woman I loved more than anyone on the planet. And Lola, who I’d grown to love quite a bit as well. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

We were in Great Britain, for the shoot, and it was even more beautiful there than I remembered it being when we’d toured there. I almost asked if we could move there permanently, that's how in love I was with that whole summer. Filming only lasted two months, but we stayed there for an extra month to close out the summer and explore in ways we never had when we had to be on a bus or a plane to a new city every other night.

I got so much inspiration being there, not just from the scenery and beauty of the simple moments, but also from Manon, the love of my life, and how full of light and joy she was all the time. It felt like we had a spell cast over us where everything in life would go our way and we’d be happy forever. I wouldn’t have minded if that was the case, not one bit.

**Manon Demissy:**

Filming my first ever movie was a lot of work, but it was so worth it. I fucked up sometimes— a lot of times— but I gave a good performance an equal number of times, if not more. The director was really great too, I always felt welcome there, like I wasn’t just some washed up rockstar who thought she could be an actress because her name was worth a lot of money. I knew that was what a lot of people were saying about me, and I tuned it out to the best of my ability, but I’m only human. Sometimes those words fed into my own insecurities and caused me a lot of anxiety. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Manon’s no stranger to panic attacks, I’d helped her through a fair amount of them at that point, and I continued to do so as she continued to need me to help. I never minded it, I only wished she didn’t have to deal with such a thing. 

I wrote one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written during that time. “Exist for Love”. It said everything I couldn’t, not in the way I meant to, at least.

**Manon Demissy:**

I felt like I’d found my thing. Guitar had always been an integral part of me, and it still was, but it was never my _thing_. There were people, even in the band, better than I was, and as comfortable as I felt performing with that instrument on stage and off, it always felt like there was something missing. Acting was that thing.

I still played my guitar, more often than I’d even intended to, because like I said, music is as much a part of me as anything, but I was glad to have it in that sort of informal way, like back when Lucas and I would practice songs together with no one to impress. It was refreshing, like so many things in my life were at that time. 

Moving back to LA came too soon, but I was excited to see all of our friends again. We kept up with Lucas and Eliott the most of everyone, but even so, I’m sure we only barely scratched the surface on whatever shenanigans those two got up to in our absence.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

When we got back I told Imane that I couldn’t wait any longer, I had to start making music again, in whatever capacity I could. What do you know, in the time we’d been gone, an opportunity for me to do so had opened itself up.

Lucas and Eliott moved into a new place, and though I was sad that the place we’d made so many memories in was gone, it was probably for the best, privacy wise. A lot of people knew that was where we’d lived, and I’m honestly surprised that never caused a problem during our time in the band, but I knew the media was still hounding the both of them quite a bit so if they wanted to keep their relationship under wraps they’d have to live elsewhere.

Elsewhere happened to be even closer to where Manon and I lived, which I liked, and though it wasn’t on the beach anymore, it didn’t need to be. That house was insane, though I guess they’d made the money, they deserved to spoil themselves a bit.

One thing that the house had, that Lucas had made sure it had, was a recording studio in the basement. Technically, it hadn’t been there when they moved in, but when you’re Lucas Lallemant, people will do pretty much anything you want, so voila, a recording studio was made. And now I had somewhere to make music. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Lucas and Eliott’s new place was so completely not what I expected. It was far more extravagant than I’d have thought either one of them would want, but that fact seemed to be some sort of joke to them, so I never questioned it.

**Lucas Lallemant (lead singer, Seven Minutes in Heaven):**

I don’t know why I felt like I needed a recording studio put in, because I obviously wasn’t doing music anymore, but it ended up being worth it for Daphné. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I felt bad just using Lucas’ studio all the time, but he never seemed to have a problem with it. He’d help me out or just sit out on the other side of the booth while I sang and played different instruments. I could tell, watching him watch me, that he missed it a lot, but that he was too stubborn to do something about it. I’m not sure what his stubbornness was all about, because it wasn’t like he’d told anyone that he was quitting music, just the band. He could have a solo career too. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Daph and Lucas were down in that studio all the fucking time. We’d all only been away from the music industry for about two years, but they both missed it so badly, you could tell, even when they didn’t say a word.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I tried as hard as I could to get Alexia as a producer for Daphné, but she was pretty much bound to the whims of Shame and whatever they wanted her to do. 

**Alexia Martineau:**

If I hadn’t had such a great connection with the artists I was working with, I would have found whatever way I could to jump ship and go work with Daphné, but I couldn’t just leave people hanging like that, especially when Charles would probably blame _them_ for my departure. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Not having a producer put a bit of a cramp in my excitement. I could play instruments, write melodies, sing songs, write lyrics, all of it, but I’d never been involved in the production aside from listening and giving some input. I didn’t think I’d be able to do it on my own.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know what other option I had, so I delayed working more and more once again. Maybe it was a sign from the universe that I really was nothing without the band. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I wish I would have been able to be there for Daphné more while she was trying to figure out all that shit with her music, but I was busy as hell. We were about to start our press junket for _Emma_ , and then the film would be premiering and it was a waiting game for awards season. I never anticipated my first role being anything award worthy, but I knew that the movie as a whole was in the running. 

Emma would always tease me about making the movie, pretending like it was about her. 

**Emma Borgès:**

If she wanted to be me _that_ bad, she could have said something sooner.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I didn’t do Manon’s press with her, I was home with Lola, and sometimes Lucas and Eliott, but I went to the premiere with her and let me tell you, movie premieres are _so_ different to album release parties. The only red carpet I’d ever walked was the Grammys, and even though this was just a premiere, somehow it was more overwhelming than the Grammys had been. I mean, people didn’t pay me much attention, which I was kind of grateful for, but I was used to music people, I wasn’t used to film people.

**Manon Demissy:**

Honestly, I think I blacked out for most of it. Not because I was drunk, I was just a tad overwhelmed, but in a good way. According to Daphné, I handled everything perfectly, but I honestly don’t remember.

I do remember what we wore though, I wore a white suit with a red turtleneck and stilettos that matched my lipstick. I didn’t feel like wearing a dress, really, and suits always made me feel more confident than I was. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Manon really needed to stop wearing suits if she wanted me to survive. She was just… so fucking hot… I couldn’t stand it.

I had this really beautiful dress with a black strapless bodice that trailed down to an ombre sort of skirt that looked like a sunset. My hair was finally long again, and it was back to my natural honey blonde instead of platinum, which I think worked better with that look than my rockstar hair. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I’ve never really been a huge fan of watching my work, I just get too overly critical, but what I do remember from that night was being in awe. Not of myself, though I didn’t hate my performance as I’d expected to, but of everything. The fact that somehow I’d made it into a movie that was _that_ good, that there were people there who thought I had a real talent for acting, that this might be my jumping off point for the rest of my life. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Anyone with eyes could see that Manon stole the show. I knew that she was a good actress, but this was beyond what even I knew. I was so proud of her, and I was so proud to be hers. 

**Manon Demissy:**

When I got a nomination for a Golden Globe I didn’t know what to do. I really hadn’t expected it at all. I knew a lot of people wouldn’t see the movie and would say I’d just been nominated because I was Manon Demissy, but I hoped that it wasn’t the truth, that I’d been nominated because I was a good actress.

I won the award, to pretty much everyone’s surprise. I didn’t know what to do, I felt like every other actress deserved it more than me. They probably did. I didn’t make any friends in the acting industry for a little while because of the success I got right off the bat, everyone thought I paid my way to good roles and awards, that I’d just had everything in life handed to me. I knew my own life, and I knew that I’d had a lot of things easier than most people, but there had been some hardships, things I was still trying to heal from. I didn’t owe anyone those stories, though, so I just continued to do my work with grace and passion and hope that people would see that I wasn’t just in this to win Oscars. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Was I jealous that Manon won an Oscar for the first role she’d ever played? Hell yeah, but I’d won two more than her at that point, so I was still winning. 

_(Idriss laughs)_

Not that awards really matter, of course.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

After Manon won the Oscar everyone wanted to work with her, which meant she was always busy. Nothing she did was as high profile as _Emma_ had been, and she only chose things she really connected with and could put her heart and soul into, but it worked out in her favor. She was pure gold in every role.

My own career was still on hold, but I wanted to change that and I racked my brain for any way I could possibly do that when it hit me. The answer was right in front of me all along. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Daphné asked me to be her producer. I was shocked, because I’d been sure they’d find a way to make it work with Alexia, but more than anything I wanted to do it. Production had always been one of my favorite parts of making music, and now I could be the one making the final decisions on what sounded beautiful. Plus, I’d get to work with Daphné, so I was sold.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I knew he missed music as much as I did, even if he didn’t want to be the one in the spotlight anymore. This was a way we could both get what we wanted. 

Once Lucas was on board, it was easy. We’ve had a wave of unspoken communication since way back in the day, and it worked so well between us. Yeah, sometimes I could be a diva or he could be a control freak, but ultimately he had my best interests at heart and I trusted his judgement more than anyone else’s. 

The people had a point when they said we were a power couple. We were, just on a platonic level. Gay and lesbian solidarity and all that.

**Manon Demissy:**

Daphné never let me listen to the music the two of them were making, because she said she wanted it to be a surprise, which only made me more impatient. She said that if she couldn’t see my movies until they came out, I’d have to do the same with her music. I guess it was a fair trade off, even if the wait drove me crazy.

_(Manon laughs)_

I was glad to see Lucas working with her, though. I knew how much he missed it without saying that he did, and I think this was the right move for him to make.

While Lu was busy, so was Eliott. He’d made one movie by that point, which had done pretty well with critics and audiences alike, and apparently he was working on something new that he wanted Idriss and I to star in. 

**Eliott Demaury (singer,** **_Le Premier_ ** **and** **_Polaris_ ** **):**

What was the point of having actor friends if you couldn’t write roles for them? All directors have their favorites, Manon and Idriss were mine. 

**Manon Demissy:**

_Lux and Obscurus_ , it was called. It was a story about soulmates, but not in the way you’d think. My character was a lonely soul, an artist who dreamed impossible dreams. Idriss’ character was the life of the party, a boy with a cocky grin who seemed like breaking hearts came as naturally to him as everything did, yet still had a life rooted in sadness. 

I thought the script was brilliant when Eliott brought it to me. Take some classic character and plot tropes, then flip them on their heads and make them entirely their own. Each character had more depth than what was in their two sentence description, so many different things that made each one of them so unique. And the characters were soulmates, yes, but not romantic soulmates. Eliott said he was sick of Hollywood writing stories about true romantic love conquering all, he wanted people to know that platonic love could make just as big an impact. Even when the characters found people they loved, it didn’t diminish the bond they’d built and shared throughout the course of the film.

I reminded me of Lu and Daph and a lot of ways, of me and Eliott in others, or Eliott and Idriss, or Baz and Arthur. He wrote all kinds of relationships in such a meaningful way.

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

_Lux and Obscurus_ was different from any script I’d ever read, and I knew it was special. I also knew that I was going to do it whether I liked it or not, because I trusted anything Eliott put his heart and soul into.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

While they got into the preproduction phases of the movie, Lucas and I got deeper into what we wanted for my album. Lola came to the studio with us a lot, she’d just sit there and color or play with toys, or sometimes just sit on Lucas’ lap while I was in the booth. 

I had a really great lineup of songs, and I was loving how the production was turning out, I was just searching for the right order of the songs and name of the album. A lot of my songs were overwhelmingly about love, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t mind the world knowing how deep my love ran and who my heart beat for. 

In the end, I called my first solo album _Sappho’s Lost Love Letters_. It was a bit of a mouthful, maybe, and a lot of people didn’t get the reference, but I didn’t need them to. That bit was for Manon and I.

**Manon Demissy:**

I was the one who introduced Daph to Sappho. We read a lot of her poetry together, and when I left the house I’d always leave her a note with a quote from Sappho on it, just as a gesture of my love. When she told me what she’d titled her album, I got this warm buzzing feeling all over my body, and my heart grew about ten sizes.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

It was risky, but I decided not to do any heavy promo. I didn’t want this to feel like a cash grab, or like I was trying to prove a point, I wanted people to know that this work came from a love of music and of the people I shared my life with. I wanted it to feel authentic.

The album cover was shot by Manon, actually. I wanted to be seen through her gaze, and I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.

**Manon Demissy:**

I’m no photographer, but I loved Daphné enough to try, for her sake. She pretty much knew what she wanted, so she was basically directing me the whole time, but I love the shot we ended up with. She’s lying in the grass with her hair fanned out behind her, flowers resting in her beautiful golden hair. There were photos where she smiled, but I liked the one we used the best, where her face simply looks serene, if not a little bit inviting, which captured the feel of the album really well, I thought. She was wearing a bright pink sweater, of course, and there's a shadow crossing part of her face, and she looks so herself in it, that I fell in love all over again.

We only edited the photo to add a pink hue over it, because it matched the vibe of the photos, and from what Daphné had told me, the vibe of her work. Plus, she loved the color pink.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I was surprised when Manon fought me on using one of the smiling photos, but I’m glad she had her way in the end. The photo she took was really beautiful, which I don’t say very often about photos of myself. 

The album was set to come out just before Manon started filming Eliott’s movie. We’d have to be better at trading off responsibilities with Lola, given that we’d both be really busy for a time, but our friends came through for us. Yann and Emma helped out a lot, as did Lucas and Eliott, but I couldn’t just give up on her because I was busy again. 

Imane wanted me to tour, and I wanted that too, but I knew it couldn’t be as long as the others had been, I couldn’t just leave everything up to Manon. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I told Daphné not to stress about it. This was her thing, and she deserved to live it to the fullest. We had a whole group of people who’d help take care of Lola while she was gone, and Lola probably wouldn’t notice or care much anyway. Plus, I’d come out to visit her during some shows with Lola, like they’d come to Europe with me for the _Emma_ shoot. 

**Imane Bakhellal:**

The tour wasn’t going to be like Seven Minutes in Heaven, but I think that was ok for both of us. I was pregnant, so I wouldn’t be going with her, but I sent Lucas in my place as an earpiece in case she needed anything. Now, I’m aware Lucas Lallemant wasn’t the person to go to for managerial duties, but I knew he missed being up there on that stage, and I thought maybe this would help.

We also got her a backup band, and she required that it be made up entirely of LGBTQ+ identifying women, so that’s what I did. Her band was made up of four amazing women, Engel Beekman, Noor Bauwens, Mia Winter, and Sam M’Pele. Mia had worked with Eliott before, actually, on his first album and part of the MXM tour. She’d left Shame at this point and was looking for a new person to play keys for, and we were lucky to have her. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

The girls in my band were so great, I really loved touring with them. Engel reminded me a lot of myself in various ways, actually, but she was about seven years younger than me. I actually felt kind of old when I started touring, as crazy as that sounds. Not because I couldn’t keep up or anything, I was only in my early thirties, but it felt so different from my tours with the band. I felt capable of anything, I knew my way around the stage like the back of my hand, and I was more mature than I’d ever been with the group.

Noor and Engel started dating during that first tour, and I think they’re still together now, which I obviously have no choice but to take the credit for.

**Manon Demissy:**

The first time I visited was a surprise. Lola was with Emma and Yann for the weekend, and Daph was playing back to back shows in Minnesota, so I figured I’d see her and my dad all in one. Eliott came too, to visit Lucas. I swear, the two of us were thick as thieves those days. 

I say that as if anything’s changed since then. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I really was surprised, and pleasantly so, of course. The tour was going better than I ever could have anticipated, but Manon only made it sweeter. We went to visit Richard while she and Eliott were in town, and I was wary of Lucas, but he seemed to be doing all right. It was a nice change to have us all, by some miracle, doing as well as ever. Being happy. 

My records were still selling really well, especially considering they’d been released independently, and though there were a lot of critiques about my pronoun usage and the fact that I was a lesbian at all, a lot of reviews of my album were really hopeful, in that I could be the face of change for the rights of queer women. I was really proud of that. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Daphné was so radiant, her energy was something so beautiful and pure and I just wanted to capture it and release it everywhere across the world so everyone could see what I saw. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

She visited me a few more times after that, sometimes with Lola, sometimes without, and at the end of the tour we spent a week in Venice together with Lola because the tour had ended in Italy.

By the time I got back, the release of _Lux and Obscurus_ was imminent, so it was a good time to trade off responsibilities again.

**Manon Demissy:**

It was the most nervous I’d ever been for a project, I think, because I’d put so much more of myself into that film than I’d ever put into anything. It was as much my story as it was Eliott’s or Idriss’. Critics had already given it great reviews, but I couldn’t stop thinking about all the things people could hate about it. My character had a relationship with a woman in the movie, and even though that was very much a part of my life outside my acting career, I knew that people still didn’t like to see that in their movies, as fucked up as it was. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

I was as nervous as Manon but I kept it together for the sake of her _and_ Eliott, who was freaking out equally as much, if not more. He still had things to prove if he wanted to be taken seriously as a director, and I think that the fact that he and Lucas wouldn’t be hand in hand through all the press nonsense put him more on edge. 

All the worrying was for nothing, though, which I guess I should have anticipated. When has Eliott ever done something that hasn’t turned out to be revolutionary and life changing for everyone involved?

**Manon Demissy:**

The film was perfect, in every way. I was proud of all of us, but Eliott most of all. We all won numerous awards for it, including best actress, actor, director, original screenplay, and picture. Yeah, I know.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

The late nineties were just a wave of high after high. I started working on another album, Manon looked for films that fit her fancy, even though pretty much everyone in the industry wanted to work with her. My first solo album had been so full of love and whimsy, which was a big part of who I was, but I had a fierce side that I didn’t always show to many people that I wanted to explore more on the second album.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Daphné’s album was absolutely nothing like her first, but people ate it up. She won album of the year for that one. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I thought I was funny, having “False God” and “Pussy is God” one after the other. It was risky putting the latter song on the record, but people really loved it as much as I did, which I was both surprised and ecstatic about. For my first album I’d done a video for “Exist for Love”, which actually is still a favorite of mine, because Manon played my love interest in it, _finally_. We gave a few subtle nods to the Romeo and Juliet story of “Minute by Minute”, because we were finally with the right partners. 

For my second album, I did videos for “Nobody”, “Nightmare”, and “S.L.U.T.”. I still feel clever about that last one, no matter what Mr. Lallemant says, I came up with the acronym all on my own. Sure, he helped with some lyrics on some tracks, but that acronym— sweet little unforgettable thing— is some of my finest work.

The album was called _Girl of the Year_ , which was actually taken from a song that I ended up not using on the album but I loved too much to scrap entirely. It showed a whole new side of myself, and I felt like it was about time that I did. I knew I was older, I was in my late thirties, but some of the lyrics had been taken from the journals I’d kept since I was a kid, writing songs I never thought I’d get to sing. “Perfect Places”, for example, had been written when I was nineteen, during when we were making our first album as Seven Minutes in Heaven. I wanted my music to resonate with people of all ages, because it was a scrapbook of my entire life. 

The cover for that one was made up of photos of myself and some of the women I held dear, because in a sense we were all the ‘girl of the year’. In total, it was just nine of us, because I couldn’t fit every woman I’d ever met so I just chose the ones that had been a part of my career, which included Manon, Emma, Imane, Alexia, Noor, Engel, Mia, Sam, and myself. 

**Manon Demissy:**

I did my thing while Daph did hers, and we existed in such a perfect harmony that it was hard not to find happiness in every little thing. Lola was eleven, which meant that we had to start teaching her about things we’d barely been taught about, and she was starting to get too smart for her own good. For the most part, she and Sékou were partners in crime, wreaking havoc wherever they could. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

The tour for my second album ended in 2000, which seemed crazy, that somehow we’d entered a new decade when I wasn’t looking. Unfortunately, in all the buzz of my album and tour and Manon’s acting and everything, we’d let our life with Lola fall to the wayside, and what I mistook as being a moody teenager was actually more serious. I knew that mental health issues ran in our family, as well as addiction, but I never really thought that either of those things would ever happen to me or to Lola. 

When she was fourteen, Sékou told me that she’d been self harming, because he was worried about her. I had no idea what to do, and Manon was busy with a film, so I sent her to a clinic to get help. It’s what Lucas said he wished would have been available for his mom, but it was ultimately the wrong choice, and I still feel like shit for doing it to this day. She was there for almost two whole years, not because I made them keep her there, but because the doctors working there told me she had to stay, for her own sake. I didn’t know anything about health or medicine, really, I believed them.

Eliott would talk to me sometimes, say that he didn’t think this was the best thing for her, but I didn’t know what else to do. Eventually, when she was fifteen, almost sixteen, she overdosed in their care so I pulled her out as fast as I could, realizing they’d done more harm than good. Seeing how broken she was and thinking about how I could have prevented it and how I was really no better than my own mother, it broke me. 

The habits I’d been so good at staying far away from came back, and I’d taken a prolonged break from music during that entire time because I had nothing to share with the world, just worry about what I was doing to my sister. I told myself, back when Lola first came into my care, that I’d do better, be better than my mom ever was to me, but I failed. It’s my biggest regret, the one I don’t think I’ll ever be able to come back from, even if she’s forgiven me.

**Lola Lecomte (sister, Daphné Lecomte):**

I blamed Daphné for a long time, I did. It was hell in there, and I wanted to hurt myself so bad that I found every way possible to do so, aside from what I’d been doing before in the hopes that they’d let me out. They never allowed visitors, so I couldn’t have seen Daphné or Manon even if I wanted to. 

I was just desperate, and lost, and I knew nothing about my real parents, so I didn’t know that I was more prone to addiction than most people, so I let it happen to myself, in a lot of ways. I’m ten years sober now, though. When Daphné and Manon don’t understand, I can talk to Eliott and Lucas, which has really helped me. 

I also met Maya, when I was in college, and even though I, at first tried to be better for her, it turned into, eventually, me being better for myself. Maya’s my wife, by the way. Gay runs in the family I guess, just like addiction. 

_(Lola winces)_

That was in poor taste, wasn’t it? 

I didn’t have an easy go of it, aside from my wonderful stay in the mental hospital. High school was hell, especially with this one bitch who I think they modelled _Mean Girls_ after. I didn’t talk to Sékou for a while after he told Daphné about my self harm, which sucked for both of us, but I was stubborn. Imane and Sofiane’s kids never liked me very much, maybe they were too sensible for me, or whatever. I grew on Sana after some time, but not so much growing up. Mostly, I just felt alone all the time, even though I knew Manon and Daphné were doing whatever they could to make up for what had happened, as a result of their actions. 

I blamed Daphné for a long time, but Maya and Eliott sort of made me see that she wasn’t the grand villain in my life. The only person that would be was myself, if I continued to let my addictions consume me.

**Maya Etienne (wife, Lola Lecomte):**

I won’t say it’s always been easy, with Lola, and I’m sure she’d say the same of me, and we were friends for a while before either one of us made any sort of step in a romantic direction. But I’m glad we got there eventually, and that we’ve both grown from who we were back in college. I was actually really surprised when I met Lola and learned who she was, because I knew all about her sister’s band and solo career, my parents had loved them, before they died when I was eleven, and I held on to that piece of them like a lifeline. I never knew Daphné had a sister, though, and I don’t know how I was lucky enough to find Lola when I did. She doesn’t believe in soulmates, but I know she’s mine, and I’m hers.

**Lola Lecomte:**

I only tell Maya that I don’t believe in soulmates. Of course I do, I knew it from the moment I met her. I’d never met anyone like that before. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

My music break turned into more, as you all probably know. I just couldn’t do that anymore, not when Lola needed me more than she probably ever had, even when she was a toddler. It took a while, but eventually we got back to a good place, and she forgave me, even though I’d never forgive myself. I wasn’t really healthy at all during that time, but Lola didn’t know enough to notice, and I pretty much told Manon to fuck off whenever she did. 

I eventually told Lola about my history with eating disorders, though, and I told her that I’d try to make a change, if she did the same. We held one another accountable, and we had each other’s backs when we were struggling. I realized that maybe I shouldn’t have been trying to be the best parent ever this whole time, I should have focused on being the best sister I could be.

**Manon Demissy:**

I should have done better too, with Daphné and with Lola. I just never knew where my place was as one of Lola’s guardians, because to her, I was just her sister’s girlfriend, not another mom. I don’t think she even considered Daphné a mom at all, which actually ended up being better for their dynamic.

I was still acting, I got nominated for many more roles, and I loved what I did. Even through the pain and the uncertainty, Daphné and I had each other through it all, which I think was the most essential part of it. Neither of us could have done any of it without one another. The good and the bad. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Manon and I got married in 2008, once same sex marriage was legalized in California. I proposed to her, because I’d been planning to do so basically from the moment we kissed for the first time. We’d been to Arthur and Luc’s wedding six years earlier, and that had only cemented how much I wanted this. Lola was my maid of honor, Eliott was my best man. I wanted it to be Lucas, initially, but he was Manon’s brother, so she got first dibs. I’d gotten a lot closer to Eliott than I ever had been, what with his insight on raising Lola and all that. The wedding was also when I met Maya for the first time, because Lola had been keeping her a secret. I loved her immediately.

**Lola Lecomte:**

Manon and Daphné’s wedding was the first time that I saw a future like that for myself. I’d never thought much of marriage, but seeing Maya there, and dancing with her at the reception, I let myself imagine us doing the same, on our wedding day, sometime in the future.

**Maya Etienne:**

We’ve been together since I was twenty two, she was twenty. We got married just this last year, and it was the best day of my life. We’ve had plenty of ups and downs, but who hasn’t? It’s only made us more aware of what a great role communication has to play in relationships and how much we need to support one another in whatever comes our way. Ironically, ‘minute by minute’ has always been a philosophy of mine, inherited from my parents who inherited it from the band I married into. And yes, I say band, because if you get an in with one of them, the rest are a package deal. 

**Manon Demissy:**

Lucas was my best man, of course, and Emma was my maid of honor. She and Yann were still pretending they weren’t together, which I’m pretty sure everyone knew was bullshit by that point, but what can you do.

The wedding was so magical, everything I never knew I’d dreamed of. All of our friends were there, and everyone was happy, and my life was perfect, for that one night.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Am I upset that I left my career, my passion, after only two solo albums? Yes and no. I still write a lot of music for various artists, actually, I got into it after Lola went to college, so I still have that outlet in my life, at least. Even if I had more to say, or more that I think I could have or should have done, the decision I made to stop where I did was ultimately the best choice for me and my family. Definitely didn’t mean to accidentally retire in my early forties, but maybe that was just the way it was meant to be.

**Manon Demissy:**

I’m still acting, and I’ve given a couple speeches in various forums and marches and such as an advocate for feminism. Arthur is a better activist than I could ever try to be, but we work together sometimes, because I know that same passion drives the both of us in speaking out on important causes, and one of those important causes happens to overlap for us. 

I don’t regret the way my life has gone since leaving the band. I regret some things that have happened, or things I didn’t do, but ultimately I’m just grateful for all I have and all I’ve accomplished, and all I’ve loved. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned through everything in my life, it’s that we should always just lead with kindness. Always. You never know what someone else is going through, after all.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

The good in my life heavily outweighs the bad, and I want to keep that momentum going for the rest of my life, and the lives of the people I love. Everything in my life has happened for a reason, and I may not always know what that reason is, but I just have to trust that it’ll all turn out ok.

If not, I’ll just blame the bad things on Charles Munier as I’ve done pretty much since I first met him.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Oh, boy, where do I even begin. 

_(Lucas laughs)_

I say that as if my life has been at all interesting in the past thirty years. Ok, that’s not fair, I’ve had a lot of interesting moments in my life, but when you compare it to the consistent chaos of Seven Minutes in Heaven? Nothing. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas freaked for months on end after we both quit the band. I told him to just go back, if that was what he wanted, but he always maintained that it wasn’t. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I was freaked out because I was torn between two sides of the same argument. On one side, I’d literally just given up everything I’d ever wanted, and now Seven Minutes in Heaven was over forever, but on the other, maybe it was time to move on, it didn’t mean I couldn’t still find something else to be passionate about. 

The issue there was that the only other thing I was passionate about was Eliott, and my privacy was everything to me at that point in time, so there was no way I was going to be vocally passionate about _that_.

**Eliott Demaury:**

The paparazzi was up my ass every time I left the house. That was why we moved, because it was too risky to see each other in places that the paparazzi and general public knew so well. And quite honestly, I was more than fine with keeping our relationship a secret from the public now that we weren’t at the forefront of pop culture. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

So, the reason we ended up in the big ass house we ended up in was because I was being a little shit. I adamantly argued against Eliott’s house choices, even though they were all pretty great, most because I was joking, but then Eliott told me that he didn’t care if we lived in Charles Munier’s old place or whatever, as long as we were together.

For the record, we didn’t move into a house previously occupied by Charles, no amount of exorcism or sage burning would have rid the remnants of that particular demon, but I chose the next best thing. A massive, expensive house that was far too large for even _ten_ people, that looked the exact type of place Charles would bust a nut over to even be in the presence of.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas is so fucking stupid, I love him so much.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I had a recording studio built in the basement, because I still wanted to make some music, even if I didn’t do anything with it. Eliott was working on a script for a movie he wanted to make almost nonstop, so I had to find some way to entertain myself in the meantime. 

I’d intentionally chosen a house closer to Manon and Daphné so we could see them more often, like when we all lived together, but they all of a sudden went to Europe for the summer, and Eliott was always working, so I ended up spending a lot of time babysitting. 

Yann would invite me over, which I’d always say yes to, because I wanted to make sure we were still best bros and that he didn’t hate me for no reason again, and then we’d stare at Sékou for hours on end while Emma was writing, or whatever. 

Yann was such a sap, he literally could have just sat and watched his son for days on end and not gotten bored. 

**Yann Cazas:**

Not my fault I have the best son in the entire world.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t think Maria liked me much, so I didn’t hang out with Baz super often either, and I ended up at Imane’s place quite a bit. She’d decided to take on managing Daphné and Manon in different fields, and while she was doing great with Manon, she was struggling with Daphné. She told me about what they wanted to do for Daphné’s album, and release it independently, but they didn’t have a studio or any independent producers. A light went off in my brain, and I found what I’d been looking for.

Music production had always fascinated me to no end, and while Alexia did a fucking incredible job with our albums, I always wished I’d had more of a role in that side of things. Now I could, and for Daphné, someone I would have worked to the ends of the earth with. Plus, I had a whole ass recording studio in my basement, which wasn’t really doing anyone any good going unused. Now, I didn’t mention it to Imane, because ultimately Alexia would always be the person she went to for that job, and she said that there was a possibility Alexia _would_ be able to work with Daphy, so I stayed quiet for the time being. Even if I didn’t end up working with Daphy, I could always try to work with other artists independently. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I started working on my first movie. The project that I’d written before the split… that one was really special to me, and I didn’t want that to be my directorial debut in case I didn’t have the opportunity to put the love and care into it that I wanted, so I started working on a new story, just to get myself out there in the industry.

It’s a good thing the name Eliott Demaury meant something, I guess, because I’m not sure the production studios would have taken a chance on me otherwise. It was also good that Idriss was who he was, and that people in the industry would listen to pretty much anything he said.

My first film was called _The First Day of My Life_ , and it was about a boy in Paris falling in love for the first time. It was nothing special, storywise, but I wanted both love interests to be men, which obviously wasn’t as widely appreciated as heterosexual love stories. I didn’t want it to be a rom-com, but I wanted it to have a happy ending, because lord knows there aren’t enough of those as far as gay love stories are concerned. The production company that bought the film pushed back on that really hard. They said that they only wanted this project because anything with my name would sell, but they didn’t want me pushing my ‘homosexual’ agenda. I wanted to be a director, but I didn’t want to do it if I was going to be under the thumb of another Charles. 

Then I remembered I had a manager, and maybe if they wouldn’t listen to me, they’d listen to him.

**Sofiane Alaoui:**

They didn’t really listen to me, not at first, but if I’ve learned anything from Imane it’s how to fight to get what’s right. She and Idriss helped me a lot in this particular case, but we did it in the end. Eliott could make the film he wanted to make, and the production studio would just have to deal with that.

**Eliott Demaury:**

The actors that played the leads were so incredibly perfect for the roles, it felt like fate. Their names were Isak Valtersen and Even Bech Næsheim, as you’re probably all aware, and I’m not saying that I’m a matchmaker to the stars, but come on, Isak and Even are THE best couple in Hollywood. I guess unintentional matchmaking is another thing Daphné and I have in common. I got along with both of the actors really well, which made for a nice energy on set. I swear sometimes when I talked to Even it was like looking in a mirror, and he always said he felt the same. 

I got more and more excited the closer we got to the end of shooting, because _this_ was what I’d been waiting my whole life to do, I just hadn’t realized it. Music was my stepping stone, my way to learn about life and love and how to create and exist within stories. I still loved all the work I’d done in that field, and I think that it was the right thing for me to do, at the right time, but I knew directing was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott would tell me all the time about his movie, what he did each day, the changes they made to the scripts or the exciting things they’d done with the cameras. He’d wanted to film on location in Paris, but they didn’t budget for that, so he was just on a soundstage in LA, but at least he was home with me. From what he said, the sets felt just as real as Paris in a lot of ways.

**Eliott Demaury:**

In my fake Paris, all I could think about was how much I wanted to go back to the real place, especially with Lucas. I actually kind of wondered what my parents were up to, if they were even still alive. I knew they wouldn’t care about me, or that I’d somehow surpassed their levels of fame, but even though I hadn’t seen them since I was fourteen, I did still think about them from time to time.

My movie wrapped after a few months, and then it was off to post. They hired a really good editor, but I was still a bit of a control freak, so I spent most time with her in the room making sure everything was as perfect as I wanted it to be. It was, it really was.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Once Daphy and Manon got back from the UK, Daphy asked if she could use my studio. This was the first step to my end goal, so of course I let her. I mean, I would have let her without the ulterior motives, but ulterior motives are my middle name. 

The songs she’d been working on by herself were really something. They were a whole lot different from what we’d done in the band, but they suited her. I always sat on the opposite side of the booth while she worked, sometimes with Lola, sometimes by myself. She’d ask me for input on lyrics and melodies and such, but for the most part I was just an observer. 

Everyone had moved on except for me, and I was starting to feel it. I wanted to move on too, I didn’t want to stay stuck in who I was in the band forever, especially because that version of myself wasn’t always the best version of myself.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I couldn’t go to my movie premiere with Lucas. I’d gotten a copy for us to watch together at home before it hit theaters, but it wasn’t the same. I respected Lucas’ boundaries, and frankly, I didn’t mind them all that much, but I did wish that we could have been at the premiere together. 

The movie turned out beautifully, even if we did meet some backlash. That was expected. Still, it did better with critics and audiences than the studio had expected, so it seemed their investment in me wasn’t in vain after all. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I loved _The First Day of My Life_. I’d never seen a movie that handled queer characters with such depth and care before, and I nearly cried the entire time just because of that. It wasn’t that I hadn’t expected Eliott to excel at this, like he did at everything, but I was really blown away by his work. This was his thing, the art that he’d been put on this earth to make, it was clear to see. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wasn’t nominated for any awards for that film, but I didn’t expect to be. The impact that it had on so many people in the LGBTQ+ community, including the love of my life, Lucas himself. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t know how film awards worked, really, I’d barely known how the Grammys worked, so I didn’t know if it was possible for Eliott to be nominated for anything or not. He wasn’t, but Manon was, so I was extremely happy for her, but I also felt bad if it was something that Eliott really wanted. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I had to assure Lucas a million times over that I wasn’t worried about any sorts of awards. I hadn’t expected any, I didn’t need any. Just getting my stories out there was enough. Lucas was cute about it, though, the tips of his ears would get pink any time he brought it up, like he was embarrassed or something. I know he was just trying to make sure I was ok with it, and show me how much he cared, but I did find it a bit funny. All in a cute way, though.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

A little bit after the Oscars, Daphné came over, and I assumed she was just going to go back to working like she usually did, but she demanded that I produce her album for her. I asked about Alexia, and she said that Alexia couldn’t get away from Shame, but that she wanted me anyway, even if she could have had Alexia. 

Ha, take that Alexia.

_(Lucas is hit in the head with a boom pole)_

Ow! That hurt!

Anyway, I got to work immediately. My brain had been spinning with possibilities about where we could go with the production on her songs and now I could release all of that and make some magic, which is what I did best. 

In the meantime, my relationship with Eliott was as good as ever, better than good, honestly. Everything I’d been so worried about, in having a good life with Eliott, those weren’t worries at all, not in the slightest. We got into little arguments sometimes, but nothing that lasted. We knew this was it, that we were going to spend our lives together. It’s all I’d ever wanted, really, even longer than I’d realized. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I’d never been worried that we’d fall apart if we didn’t have a mutual collaboration in music, but it was always good to know that we could flourish outside of that life, which was all we’d known for so long. I was itching to get my hands back on my first project, but I knew it still wasn’t time for that one yet. Instead, I started writing _Lux and Obscurus_.

The idea just came to me suddenly, and I worked on it nonstop until I got every last detail from my brain to the page. Maybe it was a hypomanic episode, or something, I honestly don’t know. I was keeping up with medication and therapy, but there were still days that felt different than others, and I’ve had more episodes since my last major depressive one, but I’ve never fallen quite that low again. I have too many things in my life to live for, and that’s what keeps me going even when everything feels like too much. 

I probably could have done more to advocate for mental health in the past, and I’m trying to make up for that now, but I guess I never felt like I owed it to anyone to share that part of myself with the world. Now I know that it’s not about owing people anything, it’s about awareness, destigmatization, and making people feel less alone. When I found out that Vincent Van Gogh was suspected to have been bipolar, I found comfort in the fact that this artist I’d spent my whole life admiring was a little bit like me. Of course, his story doesn’t have the ending I want mine to, but you get the point. I want to be that person for other people, who think less of themselves for something that _isn’t_ any less than neurotypical people. Different, maybe, but not less than.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Dude, I was so fucking proud of my work on _Sappho’s Lost Love Letters_ . And Daphné’s, of course, she’d done the brunt of the work. We were a great duo, we really were. Eliott’s movie, _Lux and Obscurus_ , was about platonic soulmates, and I related to it so much in my relationship to Daphné. I think she felt the same. We’d argue over which one of us was Lux and which one was Obscurus, and she’d always tell me that I couldn’t be Obscurus because I was afraid of the dark.

I wasn’t anymore, for the record.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Lucas was obviously Lux, even if he’s not a walking ray of sunshine like Eliott. He’s bright as a shooting star, and just as explosive. I wasn’t like that, I wasn’t as compelling as he was, even if I was just as important. We had different strengths, but we both balanced each other.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Of course Daphné was Lux, have you met her? She’s this bright burst of sunlight, though not in the same way as Eliott. Her light is a bit more blinding, it can scare people away even though it’s so warm and open. Obscurus fit me best, I mean I was still hiding in the closet for god’s sake. My life had been bookmarked with shame for a long time, and for the most part I was still hiding.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

Lucas and Daphné were a match made in heaven after all. Seven Minutes in Heaven, maybe. The album was wonderful. So incredible. And, unsurprisingly, quite a few people thought so.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It was strange to me that I’d put all this work into an album that wasn’t really about me, at the end of the day. I didn't know if I liked it or not, honestly. Daphy deserved all the praise in the world, and I didn’t want her praise at all, but I missed being at the center of it all sometimes.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas was sulking a bit. This wasn’t unusual, Lucas was prone to sulking, but I generally preferred happy Lucas to sulky Lucas, so I did what I could to help the cause.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I knew I was being a baby about it, I just didn’t know exactly what I was feeling in general, so that was a strange thing to navigate. 

I figured I’d have time to work it all out anyway, and Eliott was my knight in shining armor, as always. He always made me feel good. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I mean, I did my best. When Lucas was in a mood, I was historically the only one who could get him out of it, something I prided myself on greatly. A little known fact about rock legend Lucas Lallemant: croissants were his weak point. Even if he was pissed off to all hell, or drowning in a bucket of tears, croissants always made him smile.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Oh, what, you’re telling me that if Eliott Demaury came to you with the softest smile in the world and a bag of croissants, you wouldn’t instantly feel better too? 

**Eliott Demaury:**

With Lucas feeling a bit better, I got back to _Lux and Obscurus_. Idriss and Manon were the only two people I ever would have considered for the lead roles. Thankfully, they were both free and willing to do me a solid, so it looked like we might really have something wonderful in the making.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Imane came to me and told me that she wanted me to travel with Daphné on her tour. I was confused, because what role did I play in Daphné’s new career outside of the studio? But Imane was pregnant, and she didn’t want Daphné to be alone, so that left me to go in her stead. I think it was also her way of showing me I could still be a part of it all, even from the sidelines. 

I had to talk to Eliott about it, obviously, because he was about to start filming and I didn’t want to upset things between us, but he was all in for it.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I wouldn’t be around much, with filming and everything, and I thought this would be a good way for Lucas to decide whether he missed it enough to go back to it or not. Besides, distance made the heart grow fonder. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

In all honesty, I probably would have gone even if Eliott hadn’t wanted me to. Even if I wouldn’t be the one performing, I’d be right there in the thick of it all, and I’d see it from a new perspective. Plus, Daphy deserved my endless support, and if Manon couldn’t be with her it was the least _I_ could do.

I sat backstage for every performance, where we could always see each other if she turned her head my way. Daphné had a really commanding stage presence out there on her own, and I did feel a bit bad that we hadn’t let her explore it during the time with Seven Minutes in Heaven. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Manon, Idriss, and I hardly spent a moment apart in the time that we were shooting. Lola was often with Yann, Emma, and Sékou, which she didn’t mind because she and Sékou always got along well despite him being three years younger than her, but sometimes she’d come visit set and watch us all work.

Manon and Idriss had great chemistry and worked well with each other, probably gained from the fact that they’d known each other for years prior. The story that we were telling felt super raw and real, which was exactly what I’d hoped for. There was an intensity to it that felt natural and organic, but all the more compelling. 

**Idriss Bakhellal:**

Eliott knew what he was doing, for sure. I hadn’t known what to expect, but working on that film is honestly one of the best film experiences I’ve ever had.

**Manon Demissy:**

I’d never felt more comfortable doing anything in my life, at least career wise. That movie was special to me, it always has been and always will be.

**Eliott Demaury:**

After shooting wrapped, Manon and I took that time to visit Daphné and Lucas on tour. They’d be in Minnesota, so Manon wanted to visit her dad too, and I figured I’d either do that or keep Lucas away at all costs, depending on his mood.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

They surprised us, by showing up. Lola was there too, and I’d missed her more than I expected. I didn’t know if I was technically an uncle or a cousin to her, but I’d accept whatever Daphy wanted to call me. 

I knew Manon would want to see Richard, and I knew she wouldn’t make me come, considering what happened last time, but I wanted to go. Not only to apologize, but also… I was ready to tell him about me. Who I was and who I loved.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I told Lucas a million times that I was fine doing whatever he wanted, that I didn’t ever need to see Richard again if he didn’t want to go, but he said that he did, and that he wanted to be honest with his whole family about who he was, if I was alright with that. Of course I was, and I’d be there to support him every step of the way.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Richard was happy to see all of us again, and I pulled him aside before we all sat down to dinner to apologize for my previous behavior. I was in a lot better place now, and I had no intention of falling back into any of that ever again. He told me that all he wanted was for me to be happy, and that he was sorry for how hard he’d been on me growing up. He knew that he hadn’t been the best father to me, but he’d like to try to do better going forward, if I’d allow it. I agreed, and he hugged me for the first time in many years. I was so caught up in having a real father in my life that I forgot what I’d meant to tell him, but I figured it could wait until later.

I told Eliott I’d talk to him after dinner, and Eliott said there was no rush but he’d be there with me if I wanted it. I did, so after dinner we both talked to him, and I told him that I was gay and I was with Eliott. 

The fucker had the audacity to look smug. He said that he hadn’t wanted to say anything, just in case he was wrong but he’d known since the last time we visited. Apparently the ways we looked at one another were entirely unsubtle. Fair enough. He wanted me to know that he was very regretful for some of the things he’d said in the past, too. He wasn’t trying to intentionally be homophobic, but he just hadn’t known any better. Now, he was committed to learning, because it impacted a majority of his close circle of family members, including Daphné and Eliott, who he said had become a part of the family the minute he met them. It meant more than I could put into words to hear him say that.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I could tell that there was this weight that had just been lifted off Lucas’ shoulders. I don’t even know if he realized how long he’d been carrying that weight, but now he could bounce with every step, and smile more easily. 

If we hadn’t been in his childhood bedroom, we probably would have had some pretty mindblowing sex that night. He had no qualms about it, but I felt weird, having his old Star Wars action figures staring at me while we made out and whatever. Plus, he had a very old rickety twin bed, and Lola was in the next room over with Manon and Daphné, so we didn’t need to cause her any unnecessary trauma. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

The rest of the tour flew by like it was nothing. We ended in Venice, and while Manon and Daphné stayed there for a little bit, I just went back home to Eliott. He was in the midst of finalizing his film, and I was so excited for this one because of how excited he was for it.

Idriss kept asking to see it before the premiere but Eliott refused because he loved it too much to share until it was perfect. I got to see it extra early, though, because I had certain perks with the director that other people didn’t. 

I got to go to that premiere too, even if I didn’t really interact with Eliott. The whole band was invited, but Daphy, Baz, and I were the only ones who came. Yann and Emma wanted to, but they had other stuff going on, and even though I knew Arthur was back in the states, I still didn’t think he’d want anything to do with me or Eliott. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

It wasn’t the film of my dreams, that one was still reserved for something else, but it was pretty damn close. Just like with my first film, I wasn’t expecting a super overwhelmingly great response, or any nominations, or anything, especially because this film also featured an LGBTQ+ storyline with Manon’s character, so when it _did_ happen, I was shell shocked. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Of course he got a bunch of awards for it, how could he not? The movie was fucking fantastic. I was excited for Manon and Idriss too, and all the acclaim they were getting from it. I thought it was a really important story, a turning point of sorts, because it represented a world in which all different kinds of love mattered, not just the boy and girl falling in love at first sight bullshit you always saw when a movie was about love. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I won at the Golden Globes and at the Oscars. Best picture, director, and screenplay at both. Lucas wasn’t there for any of the awards ceremonies, even if we both wished he was, but I had Manon, Daphné, and Idriss there cheering me on every step of the way. Sofiane was my plus one for the Oscars, and I promised Imane she’d be the next one if I got nominated for anything else.

I knew I’d probably never accomplish anything like that again, the movie swept in almost every major category, but I was fine with that. I was fine not getting any awards at all, but maybe the fact that I did get some awards meant that the film industry would recognize movies outside of their money making formula every so often until there was a fresh burst of originality across the board. 

I won’t say my movie was the most unique movie in the world, far from it, but there were some themes and approaches that weren’t as widely discussed in the world of film as others, and I didn’t think it would hurt to talk about and represent those facets more, especially when it came to sexuality and mental health representation, because both were very important to me, personally.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Daphy and I started working on her next album after the Oscars, and this one went in a completely different direction right off the bat. She had a lot of lyrics, and while her melodies started off light and beautiful like her first album, they delved into a deeper, gritter style pretty quickly. I encouraged it, because I was working on new production styles and I really thought we could make her work extra unique. It would still be Daphné, but a different side of her, one that her close friends knew well, but the world didn’t. 

Everyone knew _Sappho’s Lost Love Letters_ Daphné, and we wanted them to get to know and love _Girl of the Year_ Daphné. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas got so excited about the new project he was working on with Daphné that his energy was completely unmatched. I wanted to talk to him about how he’d felt behind the scenes at her shows, but he was so lost in the creation process I’m sure he wouldn’t have had a clear enough head for any type of serious conversation. I was fleshing out a few movie ideas I had, but I wanted to take more time between projects this time around. I knew anything I made would be compared to _Lux and Obscurus_ , and judged more harshly because of it, so I didn’t want to commit to anything that I wasn’t totally, one hundred percent, all in for.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I even helped Daphné with some of the lyrics and harmonies this time around. Our voices had always complemented one another very well, though I’d never been the voice in the background. I thought it sounded good, though, and I had a broad enough range that it didn’t take away the inherent feminine quality of her work.

I wasn’t involved in the music video process or anything, but all of her videos were really great too. While she was off doing those, I was in the studio finalizing bits of songs that weren’t quite perfect yet. The end result of the second album was angry and seductive and energetic and hopeful and lost all in one, and I loved it. It felt like it showcased her at different points in her life too, and instead of those moments feeling out of place, they were exactly what the album needed.

**Imane Bakhellal:**

I asked Lucas if he wanted to tour with her, as her guitarist, or drummer, or any other instrument he was so great at. He could be on stage and soak all that up the way he used to.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I wanted to take Imane up on her offer at first, but then I decided against it. It didn’t feel right, not for me and not for her. This wasn’t a band again, this was Daphné’s thing, and while I was involved in the process, I wasn’t a part of the product. I didn’t want the news to blast with hopes of a Seven Minutes in Heaven reunion because of my presence on stage with her, and I didn’t want people to focus more on me than on her, especially when I’d finally gotten some things to die down in terms of my levels of fame. 

I could go places without being mobbed by fans or paparazzi, even if there were always people recognizing or taking photos. It didn’t feel as invasive as it used to, even if the attention was still there. 

So, I told Imane I’d go with Daphy again, on tour, but I wouldn’t perform with her. It was the best of both worlds for me, in the end. I wanted Eliott to come with too, and he almost did, but he decided against it last minute. He said that he felt like he should help Manon out with Lola in mine and Daphné’s absence, which was understandable. We both wanted kids at some point, but we hadn’t really discussed when or how yet, and I think that was part of why Eliott wanted more time with Lola, to see if he could do fatherhood.

**Eliott Demaury:**

I’d been feeling the itch more than usual, the want of being a father, being the father I never had. Lola was a bit older, but between her and the ages of the rest of our friends' kids, I’d have a wide range to work with in seeing how capable I was.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Daphné did bring me out on stage, for one show, during her second tour. She asked me beforehand, and even if I was content on the sidelines, I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to perform. We sang a bunch of our old songs from the band and, even if my voice was a little out of practice, I felt like I rocked it. 

It was all the media would talk about, for weeks afterward, and I felt a bit of a buzz because of it, I won’t lie. We should all know by now that I’m a bit of an attention whore. Of course, it fucked me up again, in the way that I wasn’t totally sure that I did want the rest of my career to be production based, but I decided that was a dilemma for another time. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

While Lucas was gone, Lola came to me a lot and asked me to watch movies with her, but she always seemed sort of sad. I didn’t know if it was a teenager thing, or something more than that, like my kind of sadness, but any time I would try to talk about it, she’d block me out. Manon was working a lot too, so I’m not sure if she noticed, but I tried to keep my eye on Lola just in case she needed someone. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Eliott would talk about Lola whenever he called, sometimes he was worried about her, sometimes he would just talk about fun things they’d done together. I knew then that kids were definitely in our near future. Surprisingly, I was on board too. I’d never really thought much about it since the whole scare with Chloé back in the day, but I wanted to be a father and witness Eliott as a father and build up a life full of love and support that neither of us had really experienced in the way we should have. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

Lucas was the one that told _me_ that after the tour he wanted to look into adoption. We didn’t know how it would work, exactly, what with us being in a secret same sex relationship and all that, but we were willing to take the steps to figure it out.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

When the tour ended, I couldn’t get back home fast enough. It had become a new century, somewhere along the way, and I felt like that was the next fresh start for Eliott and I, and our lives as fathers.

**Eliott Demaury:**

We wanted at least two kids, we knew that much, because Lucas wanted whoever they were to be able to have the same sort of sibling bond he’d shared with Manon, even if he and Manon weren’t technically related.

‘We’ didn’t technically adopt our kids, because that wasn’t really possible in regards to discriminatory practices, no matter how famous we were, so I adopted our daughter as a single parent, which wasn’t technically true, but it worked, somehow. I think that the adoption agencies did give me some slack, being who I was. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It’s why our kids have different last names. Eliott adopted our daughter, and a few years later, I adopted our son. He was a few years old when we adopted him, though, so our kids ended up being the same age, ironically enough.

The media knew Eliott and I were still friends, and lived in the same zip code, so when our kids were tight as could be or were picked up by one of us or the other after school, people didn’t bat an eye. No one ever thought we were raising them together, which was also ironic. When they were young, they didn’t understand the secrecy much, but they acted like it was a fun sort of game, and when they were a bit older, they complained about it and said how stupid we were for living so secretly, but now I think they get it. I wish we wouldn’t have had to do that, and I wish that maybe by that point I would have been comfortable enough to say the nature of my relationship with Eliott, but I guess all that matters is that I’m saying it now.

**Jocelyne Demaury (daughter, Eliott Demaury and Lucas Lallemant):**

Everyone always thinks it's so cool, having a famous dad, but have you met him? He’s such a dork. I love him, I really do, but Bad’s the cool one, not Dad.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Yeah, so they started calling us Bad and Dad very early on. I don’t really remember the origin, but I think Jo picked up on it from Eliott, and then it stuck, and I was Bad. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I would call Lucas ‘bad’ as a joke, I’ve been doing it for ages, and I guess Jo thought it was funny, so when she started to talk, she’d call Lucas Bad instead of Dad, which meant _I_ was Dad. She passed that one onto Max when we adopted him.

**Max Lallemant (son, Lucas Lallemant and Eliott Demaury):**

Our family’s a little weird, but I couldn’t have asked for a better one. Both of my biological parents died when I was two, and they adopted me a year later. I obviously don’t remember the time in between much, but I had some residual trauma I spent years working through. Dad and Bad never looked at me like I was a problem and always accepted me for exactly who I was, especially when I came out as trans.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It was in the news a lot, because I was still famous no matter how much I’d strayed from the public eye. I wish I could have sheltered him from it all, and I am honestly so proud of all the bravery he had in committing to being himself, because it couldn’t have been easy with all the fucking scrutiny and judgement placed on him from every which angle.

All I could give was my endless love and support, and hope that it was enough.

**Max Lallemant:**

It was hard, yeah, but we made it through, and I think my Bad promised to punch any and every transphobe he’d ever come to meet in the face, so that always brought a smile to my face. Jo’s always been my lifeline too, in tough situations. I don’t know how we got lucky enough to be siblings, and to have the best parents in the world, but we did, and it’s meant more to me that I could ever say.

Don’t tell my parents that, though, I don’t want them getting big heads, people worship them enough as it is.

**Jocelyne (Jo) Demaury:**

My Dad taught me how to paint, particularly with spray paint, and that became a hobby for Max and I. Not vandalism, of course, we’re perfect law abiding citizens, but we got into urbex big time. Unless, uh, that’s illegal too, then this is all hypothetical. Hypothetically, they always sent Sékou along with us because he was older so he knew better and blah blah blah. I don’t know if he liked being forced to hang out with kids much younger than him, but they paid him to babysit, so it couldn’t have been that bad.

I really liked Lola too, I always looked up to her a lot, even when I knew that kind of bothered my Bad.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

It didn’t bother me that Jo loved Lola so much, not in the way that she thought. I just felt like in all that I’d done to be a good dad— or bad, rather— to my kids, I’d forgotten about Lola along the way, even as she was facing some of the same burdens that I had. I was the only one in her life that had been touched by addiction the way she had, other than her mother, who had perished from that addiction. Lola had definitely had a worse go of it than I had, but I should have been there telling her she wasn’t alone and making sure I could have a positive impact on her and help her struggle instead of leaving it to everyone else and keeping my kids away from it. I know that it was just fear, I didn’t want any of them to go through what I had in that regard, but I can only imagine how it felt for Lola.

**Lola Lecomte:**

I didn’t know Lucas struggled with addiction like me until I was in college. I thought that he hated me, because he seemed to want nothing to do with me after I came back from the institution addicted to drugs I didn’t even know the names of. Now I know that he was just scared by the parts of himself that he saw in me, so I guess I can’t blame him for staying away, but it hurt at the time. We’re good with each other now, though, we’re tight as can be. Maybe not as tight as Eliott and I, but tight enough.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Another thing that’s happened in the meantime of my life, was Arthur’s wedding. I hadn’t been expecting that or an invite, but I went, hoping I could mend the one bridge in my life still broken. He married a Lucas, funnily enough, but this one suits him better than I ever could have. He deserved to have all of that happiness, truly, and I’m endlessly regretful for ever playing a role in his heartbreak, but we all ended up better for it.

**Arthur Broussard:**

Lucas Lallemant ain’t hot shit, but he’s all right.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I might not call him to hang out with and watch a movie, but I know that he’d have my back and be there for me whenever I needed, because I’d do the same for him.

We haven’t had much close contact over the years, but we do keep in touch, and it makes me happy that we do. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I made two more movies in the meantime, while we were raising our kids. Both got nominated for awards and such, but neither of them won. I was still building my career towards where I am now, and the project I’ve been waiting thirty years to make.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I didn’t start my own record label, that would have been too much work on the business side of things, but I produced for many artists in my little basement studio, because I needed that release of creativity more than anything. Daphné left the industry to write for other artists because of all the stuff with Lola, and I missed working with her most of all, but I did work with a whole host of other incredible artists, and my name still had enough power to make my production services a hot commodity.

Now, though, I’ve been focusing on something else, something that people might not care about, but means a great deal to me, because I feel like this is where things should have led all along.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

Lola’s married, I’m married, I’ve done enough writing for other people, maybe it’s time for me to get back in the game, but with someone by my side. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Yeah, Daphné and I are working on some music together. We might tour, we might not, I mean we’re nearly sixty, so I don’t know who’d want to see us old fucks out there on stage, but it’s felt really good to write and perform even in the confines of my basement studio once again. Maybe it’s not the Seven Minutes in Heaven comeback everyone’s been waiting for, but this is probably the closest anyone was ever bound to get. 

Everyone has their own thing now, but music has always been Daphné and I’s thing, no matter how hard we tried to look elsewhere. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

The movie I’m about to direct is called _Polaris_ , just like the album. There was really no other option for a name for it. It’s not entirely based on our lives, but there’s a great portion of Lucas and Eliott in this particular film. I mean, it’s about two boys and their journey to finding everlasting love over the course of ten years in the music industry, so I guess it’s a bit more biographical than I intended.

_(Eliott laughs)_

In all honesty, when I first wrote it thirty or so years ago, it was so that I could give a happy ending to my story with Lucas, because I never thought we’d have the happy ending we deserved. Now, it reflects a reality that somehow, came to pass. It’s a movie for the dreamers, for the artists, for the lovers, and for everyone in between. I mean, for me, it’s a movie for Lucas but all of my movies are, to a point, just like his songs are for me. 

**Lucas Lallemant:**

I told Eliott I was finally ready to come out, because I knew how much this film meant to him, and it would never be made if I was still hiding. That’s why I’m here, now. It’s time for me to be a bit brave, so other people can see that it’s worth it, in the end, to love who you want to love in the fullest capacity available to you.

You might be wondering why Eliott and I aren’t married, why we didn’t have a secret ceremony once it was legal. We both wanted to, and Eliott proposed to me a long time ago, under a bridge in Paris, the place that had always made him feel safe even when the world was against him. But I didn’t want it to be a secret, when it happened, which is why it still hasn’t. Even I didn’t think I’d be waiting this long, and in a lot of ways I wonder just how much my life might have changed if I’d had the strength to be myself back when it was the only thing standing in my way of being with the man I loved, I’m glad that I didn’t die with this secret, and that I can hopefully make up for all the years I wasn’t honest with myself and with the world someday. 

**Eliott Demaury:**

I suppose we’ll be married by the time you finish this, because you’ll be using footage from our wedding in this documentary, but since we’re not there yet you’ll have to excuse me if I’m wrong when I say that it will be one of the happiest days of my life and the most beautiful wedding the world has ever seen. However, I don’t think I’ll be wrong.

I’ve been committed to loving this one man for so many years of my life, and I’ve been nothing but proud to do so. Lucas Lallemant is the love of my life, the man of my dreams, the moon to my sun, and I love him so goddamn much.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Yeah, I’ve been a rockstar, a bartender, a producer, a writer, and many things in between, but loving Eliott is the only thing that I’ve never tired of, even when it seemed hopeless to do so. I used to be so scared of the good things in my life that I ran away from them, but in 1990 I finally decided, once and for all, to run toward them, toward the future I wanted to have with the man I loved, and it’s the best decision I’ve ever made.

**Alexia Martineau (off camera):**

What’s the last thing you have to say, to your bandmates, to the world? What do you want them to remember of Seven Minutes in Heaven? 

**Basile Savary:**

Honestly? Thank you. They gave me some great years, and I learned a lot about life and love and the world we live in with all of them by my side, so I’m only grateful for the role that each and every one of them has played in my life.

**Emma Borgès:**

I want to say fuck you! I sent each of them a copy of my last book and they all sent one back to me signed by themselves! Even Yann, and he lives with me! This was premeditated, I will have my revenge. Watch your backs, Seven Minutes in Heaven.

**Yann Cazas:**

I’d want to tell them that it was all worth it. We might have gone our separate ways now, but those ten years together were something I never, in my grandest fantasies, would have thought possible. And to be doing it with my best friends in the world? I guess I’m just lucky to have had that at all.

**Arthur Broussard:**

I’m not mad anymore, at any of them, or at myself. I think we all ended up where we were supposed to, and Seven Minutes in Heaven was the greatest detour of my life. I mean, Lucas Lallemant probably owes me endless favors, but I can live with that.

**Eliott Demaury:**

Thanks in advance for the Oscar, I’d say.

_(Eliott laughs and blushes)_

Oh my god, I felt so bad saying that, can you cut that part out I swear I was joking! I mean, maybe _Polaris_ will win an Oscar, I don’t know, but the real story is worth more than any stupid award. I’m eternally grateful that somehow my life got entangled with theirs, and somehow I became someone to all of them, even when I was no one to myself. I wouldn’t trade any of it, with the seven of them. 

**Daphné Lecomte:**

I wasn’t the most liked in the group, even on the inside, but I started out as a scared girl trying desperately to get out of a bad family situation, and I ended up with the best family I could have asked for even if there were some unexpected bumps along the way. I’m also married to the best woman I’ve ever met in my life, which I owe to the band, so thanks for helping me get laid by the it girl of the eighties, too! 

I mostly just want them all to know how much I love them still, and that they’ll always have a friend in me. 

**Manon Demissy:**

This started out as two lonely kids playing a cover of “House of the Rising Sun”. I never would have dreamed of where my life would have gone past that, but it all happened, it was real, there was so much love and support there and none of that has wavered, even when we’re not making music. I found myself through the six of them, seven including Eliott. They gave me a gift greater than music, or money, or fame, they gave me the gift of self discovery, and confidence, and love, and that’s worth more than any money I ever made.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

First I want to ask them if they want to come over to my place and burn the three records Charles put out with our names on them, without our permission. They barely sold, of course, because everyone knew that it was a blatant cash grab that we weren’t in support of, but I got a few copies, for the memories, and so that I could burn them with the power of justice and friendship, or whatever.

But most importantly, I’d want to thank them for everything. Baz, for being the friend I never knew I needed but needed most of all, Emma, for having my back in ways I never would have expected— and for writing a sexy character into one of her books named Lucas—, Yann, for being the brother I never had, from when we were sixteen to now when we’re almost sixty, Arthur, for forgiving me, and for being there for me in times when I wasn’t myself, even if he still doesn’t fully understand the impact it had, Daphné, for being the Lux to my Obscurus and for showing me how much I matter, regardless of who I love, and sticking with me even now as we prepare to make music that maybe no one will ever listen to, Manon, for Lallemissy, which started it all, for choosing not to hate the brother you didn’t necessarily want and for becoming the best twin I could have ever asked for, and Eliott. You know what I’m thanking you for, Eliott. Simply put: everything. 

**Alexia Martineau (off camera):**

You all seem to have so much love and care for one another, would a Seven Minutes in Heaven reunion be a possibility?

**Basile Savary:**

I love ‘em, but no.

**Emma Borgès:**

In your fucking dreams.

**Yann Cazas:**

Dude, I’m almost sixty years old.

**Arthur Broussard:**

_(laughs)_

**Eliott Demaury:**

I won’t say the thought never crossed my mind, but that’s not up to me. I’m the eighth, I have the least amount of say in the matter.

**Daphné Lecomte:**

And be their background artist again? No way, I know my worth.

**Manon Demissy:**

I think it would be nice, actually, to reunite one last time, but I don’t think it’ll ever happen.

**Lucas Lallemant:**

Arthur and I got over our shit eighteen years ago, who’s to say we haven’t already? Eight fifty something year olds gathering at an overpriced oversized mansion in the middle of LA to shoot the shit about the ‘good old days’ just doesn’t count as a reunion to most, I suppose. 

For what it’s worth, it was an honor to have made music with any of them at all, reunion or not. Maybe some things are just better left to the past, right? We had a good run, an amazing one, in all honesty, but now that our story’s out there, and we’re all living our truths in the best way we possibly can, I think it’s safe to say that Seven Minutes in Heaven is officially over.

_(Eliott Demaury, off camera: Lu, are you done yet? I haven't kissed you in an hour and I'm suffering from withdrawals!)_

_(Lucas blushes, rolls his eyes, and smiles)_

In a strange twist of fate, _Polaris_ led us all to exactly where we were meant to be after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr: kieunora
> 
> feel free to leave comments, they always make my day :,)
> 
> listen to daphne's albums on my spotify: https://open.spotify.com/user/gywnzey1amottlshnjkzzsjvo?si=urVaPP6hTleY5A4TubMo0Q
> 
> stay safe and healthy. black lives matter.


	11. the songs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so! i just realized that since i changed the original song links, the lyrics are no longer accessible, and idk if anyone really even cares, but i figured i'd add them all in a short lil extra chapter with each album's tracklist just in case anyone wanted them <3 i'm also emo abt this fic atm so there's that lol 
> 
> i'll link the spotify playlists/ the original songs on soundcloud in the end notes !!
> 
> ily all and just know smih elu are still thrivin <33
> 
> (also here's my psa that i'm not a songwriter pls don't judge the lyrics too harshly the smih gang is much better than me i promise)

FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME:

**track 1 - seven minutes in heaven**

lyrics:

_i was just a boy_

_a lonely boy_

_with an empty heart_

_an empty soul_

_i didn’t know_

_a hand to hold_

_but now i hold you close_

_the sun will rise_

_it’s a better day_

_though the sky is gray_

_because i have you_

_and you and you_

_you, you, you_

_and you have me too_

_seven minutes in heaven_

_i swear i’d spend them all with you_

_like lovers do_

_like lovers do_

_all i need is you_

_you get me through_

_you’re not too lost, nor am i_

_we’ll find a way, to reach the sky_

_there is nowhere_

_i wouldn’t go for you_

_i love you i love you_

_even when i cry at night_

_and i don’t sleep alright_

_i know, i know_

_the sun will rise_

_it’s a better day_

_though the sky is gray_

_because i have you_

_and you and you_

_you, you, you_

_and you have me too_

_seven minutes in heaven_

_i swear i’d spend them all with you_

_like lovers do_

_like lovers do_

_all i need is you_

_you get me through_

_i was just a boy_

_a lonely boy_

_with an empty heart_

_i don’t know_

_if i’ll never feel alone_

_but my heart knows_

_you are my home_

_seven minutes in heaven_

_i swear i’d spend them all with you_

_like lovers do_

_like lovers do_

_all i need is you_

_you get me through_

**track 2 - breezeblocks**

**track 3 - under the sun**

lyrics:

_hey, say my name_

_hey, see my face_

_we’re twisting around, we’re upside down_

_i don’t ever ever ever want to come back down_

_do you see me?_

_do i make a sound?_

_remember me under the sun_

_tell me i’m the only one_

_there’s never enough for me_

_let me sing to you baby_

_remember me in the dark_

_stage lights and a beating heart_

_there’s never enough for me_

_let me sing to you baby_

_remember, when i was on fire_

_my soul came alive, bright lights in my eyes_

_pour another drink, i drink too much_

_remember me, remember my touch_

_twenty four hours, seven days of the week_

_i sing for you_

_you scream for me_

_twenty four hours seven days of the week_

_you fall in love_

_i, repeat_

_twenty four hours seven days of the week_

_i sing for you, you sing for me_

_remember me_

_remember me_

_remember me under the sun_

_remember me_

_remember me_

_remember me under the sun_

_remember me under the sun_

_tell me i’m the only one_

_there’s never enough for me_

_let me sing to you baby_

_remember me in the dark_

_stage lights and a beating heart_

_there’s never enough for me_

_let me sing, let me sing to you baby_

**track 4 - bambi**

**track 5 - fly**

**track 6 - why do you feel so down**

**track 7 - get it straight**

**track 8 - come a little closer**

**track 9 - pleaser**

**track 10 - suburbia**

**track 11 - mon cœur**

lyrics:

_right underneath a sunset sky_

_hours and days pass us by_

_but we have time_

_we’ll be all right_

_even when your head hangs low_

_i’ll always be your hand to hold_

_the world is scary, but you’re my home_

_my one_

_my heart_

_mon cœur_

_no time to live, life passes by_

_keep your eyes up_

_look in mine_

_take it one hour_

_one minute at a time_

_i’ve loved you nearly my whole life_

_i always want you by my side_

_but you trust in me_

_and i do it all for you_

_mon cœur_

_lilacs that drip down a pastel mind_

_keep your heart open, keep your head high_

_you’re not alone_

_not alone_

_even when your head hangs low_

_whisper to me with your voice down low_

_the world is scary but i’m your home_

_your one_

_your heart_

_mon cœur_

_right underneath a sunset sky_

_you and i_

_you and i_

_learn to fly_

_one minute at a time_

_i’m yours, you’re mine_

_mon cœur_

LE PREMIER:

**track 1 - tough on myself**

**track 2 - my body is a cage**

**track 3 - humongous**

**track 4 - affluenza**

**track 5 - blue**

lyrics:

_i think about how time passes by_

_how it stands still when i look in your eyes_

_teardrop stains on bloodshot nights_

_do you see me too?_

_i’m blue_

_now i’m blue_

_i’m covered in the color of you_

_someday_

_if i see you again_

_we’ll share a drink_

_be more than friends_

_a lazy stage of lust_

_dreaming ‘bout the sky_

_sitting on the grass_

_with your hand_

_with your hand in mine_

_i don’t even know you_

_who the fuck am i?_

_do they call them dreams_

_if the dreams all come to life?_

_standing at your mercy_

_you didn’t look twice_

_i can’t look away_

_can’t stop thinking ‘bout blue eyes_

_i’m blue_

_now i’m blue_

_i’m covered in the color of you_

_someday_

_if i see you again_

_we’ll share a drink_

_be more than friends_

_these winter nights_

_they’re not cold_

_not in the city of angels_

_but i still feel like ice_

_warm me with your gaze_

_set my heart alight_

_i’m blue_

_now i’m blue_

_i’m covered in the color of you_

_i’m blue_

_now i’m blue_

_i wish you were blue with me too_

**track 6 - sober**

**track 7 - consume me**

lyrics:

_i saw a star, a star in the sky_

_maybe it was you, maybe you were mine_

_in my mind i hold you close_

_you sing to me in the sweetest tones_

_i get swept up in the feelings so fast_

_how long is this high?_

_how long will it last?_

_in my own mind or outside it all_

_was I built to fly?_

_or was I built to fall?_

_i’m looking from my cage_

_up against the wall_

_heart poised on my sleeve_

_ready to fall_

_hours and hours_

_years and years_

_a cataclysmic dread_

_locked inside my head_

_is it worth the fight if i lose_

_i don’t want to be consumed_

_unless it’s by you_

_never let the stars consume me_

_falling in love shouldn’t be so hard_

_but falling hard means guaranteed scars_

_i’d rather have scars on my heart_

_than on my mind_

_or taken too far_

_i get swept up in the feelings so fast_

_how long is this high?_

_how long will it last?_

_in my own mind or outside it all_

_was I built to fly?_

_or was I built to fall?_

_maybe i let the stars consume me_

_after all_

**track 8 - f**k it i love you**

**track 9 - best friend**

**track 10 - beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful**

lyrics:

_looking sexy_

_i think you might be in love with me_

_what do you see?_

_they call that natural beauty_

_tell all your friends_

_that i’m_

_perfect, so perfect_

_don’t worry baby_

_they’ll never love you like i love me_

_beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful_

_they tell me all the time_

_i tell myself they’re right_

_beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful_

_whispers in the night_

_from the left, from the right_

_beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful_

_beautifully_

_beautiful me_

_beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful_

_beautifully_

_beautiful me_

_to sing_

_to weep_

_to laugh_

_to cry_

_to say_

_i’m crazy_

_to say_

_it’s a lie_

_a king_

_a queen_

_a prince_

_a knight_

_to drink_

_their wine_

_or end_

_a life_

_they’ll spin my records_

_they’ll spin ‘em all right_

_i’ll spin a fuck you_

_to the king_

_and his might_

_a beautiful disaster_

_in the corners of my mind_

_what will they say_

_when I come out of this alive_

_If pride is a virtue and my only lust is for life_

_can the king say i’m wrong?_

_that i went down without a fight?_

_they’ll spin my records_

_they’ll spin ‘em all right_

_i’ll spin a fuck you_

_to the king_

_and his might_

_beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful_

_they tell me all the time_

_i tell myself they’re right_

_beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful_

_whispers in the night_

_from the left, from the right_

_beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful_

_beautifully_

_beautiful me_

_beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful_

_beautifully_

_beautiful me_

_looking sexy_

_i think you might be in love with me_

_what do you see?_

_they call that natural beauty_

_tell me not to sing?_

_listen to me scream_

_a mirror’s not a mirror_

_if only one side gleams_

_beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful_

_beautifully_

_beautiful me_

_who do you see?_

_is it me?_

_tell him I say hi, i’ll see him in my dreams_

**track 11 - sign of the times**

MINUTE BY MINUTE:

**track 1 - lovers in the moonlight**

lyrics:

_oooh oooh ooh ooh_

_the morning i wake up_

_and you're not here by my side_

_i can't help but think_

_did i create you in my mind?_

_visions of your lips_

_a sweet, slick paradise_

_i can't help but think_

_was it real, were you mine?_

_if we leave the lights turned low_

_would you say what's on your mind?_

_would you tell me your name?_

_would you give me a sign?_

_there's something in your skin_

_the way it reaches out to mine_

_i could hold you close_

_but is it all just in my mind?_

_lovers in the moonlight_

_or love at first sight_

_did they even know_

_what they had in just one night?_

_dancing with a stranger_

_never felt so right_

_lovers in a bathroom_

_in fluorescent light_

_in the moonlight_

_in the moonlight_

_love never felt so good_

_because it was never felt twice_

_we could be everything but everything is falling apart_

_i still remember you, remember what you did in the dark_

_you looked so beautiful, so beautiful it’s breaking my heart_

_our time is gone but I can’t move on I can’t restart_

_something’s deep inside me wanting to release_

_it drills a hole inside my brain and won’t let me sleep_

_i don’t believe in love but you made me think twice_

_don’t even know your name but you’re always on my mind_

_lovers in the moonlight_

_or love at first sight_

_did they even know_

_what they had in just one night?_

_dancing with a stranger_

_never felt so right_

_lovers in a bathroom_

_in fluorescent light_

_in the moonlight (I don’t believe in, don’t believe in)_

_in the moonlight (love, love, is it love?)_

_love never felt so good (it never felt so good)_

_because it was never felt twice (under fluorescent lights)_

_i don’t believe in, don’t believe in_

_love, love, is it love?_

_it never felt so good_

_under fluorescent lights_

_lovers in the moonlight_

_or love at first sight_

_did they even know_

_what they had in just one night?_

_dancing with a stranger_

_never felt so right_

_lovers in a bathroom_

_in fluorescent light_

_though my soul stays broken_

_somehow my heart is open i_

_t’s calling you, and your pretty blue eyes_

_i wish to be yours again, for just one night_

_i don’t believe in, don’t believe in_

_love, love, is it love?_

_it never felt so good_

_under fluorescent lights_

_lovers in the moonlight_

_lovers in the moonlight_

**track 2 - can you call me tonight?**

**track 3 - reservoir**

**track 4 - scrawny**

**track 5 - south**

**track 6 - pretty girl**

**track 7 - seashore**

**track 8 - lie to me**

**track 9 - run**

**track 10 - to be so lonely**

**track 11 - viva la vida**

**track 12 - minute by minute**

lyrics:

_(over and over and over and over and)_

_(minute by minute by minute by minute)_

_life, passes by_

_and time, chooses no side_

_i set my heart on fire, to keep you warm_

_i swear i never felt like this before and i_

_oh i can’t stop thinking about_

_feeling truly alive_

_the knife of memory is no paradise_

_i’d rather be anxious than imperfectly sublime_

_somehow i always find myself here_

_screaming, dreaming, empty feelings_

_i hold my breath and take it slow_

_i tell myself to just let go_

_seconds, hours, days passing by_

_wonder if i’ll ever again see the sky_

_it’s like i’m reeling, all these feelings_

_hold my breath and start believing_

_minute by minute_

_we’ll make it out alright_

_i have to believe it_

_if i cry right now and set myself on fire_

_because nothing really matters and life passes us by_

_will i miss the moments when the world stands still?_

_when nothing else matters but the people who heal you_

_and the ones that stick around_

_place themselves in my mind_

_their hearts beat in time, say everything will be fine_

_somehow i always find myself here_

_screaming, dreaming, empty feelings_

_i hold my breath and take it slow_

_i tell myself to just let go_

_seconds, hours, days passing by_

_wonder if i’ll ever again see the sky_

_it’s like i’m reeling, all these feelings_

_hold my breath and start believing_

_minute by minute_

_we’ll make it out alright_

_i have to believe it_

_tell me your precious secrets and loves (over and over and over and over and)_

_tell me there’s light coming from above (minute by minute by minute by minute)_

_everything you love is ever so real (over and over and over and over and)_

_only you can feel what you feel (minute by minute by minute by minute)_

_hold my hand look me in the eyes (over and over and over and over and)_

_i see you, need you, want you, you’re light (minute by minute by minute by minute)_

_nighttime, nighttime, that light will stay low (over and over and over and over and)_

_no need to be afraid, just take it slow (minute by minute by minute by minute)_

_somehow i always find myself here_

_screaming, dreaming, empty feelings_

_i hold my breath and take it slow_

_i tell myself to just let go_

_seconds, hours, days passing by_

_wonder if i’ll ever again see the sky_

_it’s like i’m reeling, all these feelings_

_hold my breath and start believing_

_minute by minute_

_we’ll make it out alright_

_i have to believe it_

_(over and over and over and over and)_

_(minute by minute by minute by minute)_

_(over and over and over and over and)_

_(minute by minute by minute by minute)_

_life, passes by_

_but we’ll be just fine_

MXM TOUR:

**track 1 - cemetery**

**track 2 - not in the same way**

**track 3 - man**

**track 4 - valentine**

**track 5 - holy**

**track 6 - the look**

**track 7 - sweater weather**

**track 8 - these days**

**track 9 - asking for space**

**track 10 - i don't miss you at all**

**track 11 - cherry**

**track 12 - sunshine boy**

lyrics:

_i found a boy_

_he was made of sunshine_

_blue in his eyes_

_tastes like springtime_

_i said sunshine boy_

_look at the stars in the sky_

_that could be us_

_but instead he said goodbye_

_swore i’d never love again_

_til i had his hands in mine_

_felt like the world could end_

_but i wouldn’t even care_

_long as he was by my side_

_sunshine, my sunshine boy_

_do you know_

_that i adore you_

_sunshine, my sunshine boy_

_are you mine?_

_my sunshine boy_

_a year goes by_

_and the sun’s still in the sky_

_but am i alive?_

_going through the motions day and night_

_what is moving on_

_if you’re always in my sight?_

_swore i’d never love again_

_i thought that he was mine_

_felt like the world might end_

_just me and myself_

_thinking bout his great blue eyes_

_sunshine, my sunshine boy_

_do you know_

_that i adore you_

_sunshine, my sunshine boy_

_you were never mine_

_my sunshine boy_

_(sunshine) the grass looks greener_

_on the other side of the hill_

_(are you mine?) but do you still_

_like it when i kiss behind your ears?_

_sunshine, my sunshine_

_do you know, know that i adore you_

_sunshine, my sunshine_

_sunshine, my sunshine_

POLARIS:

**track 1 - enter polaris** (raw)

**track 2 - i think i'm in love** (blinding lights)

**track 3 - curiosity** (sanctuary)

**track 4 - infiltration** (flagpole sitta)

**track 5 - the boy who was afraid of the dark** (afraid of everything)

**track 6 - at the same time in another universe**

lyrics:

_there’s a tear, a rip, it pulls me adrift_

_there your heart lays,_

_no words left to say_

_a million worlds, infinite days_

_somehow you’re here, in every place_

_at the same time in another universe_

_i wanna be the one who puts you first_

_i want you to be mine_

_wouldn’t that be nice?_

_parallel places, parallel faces_

_i try and i try, do over my life_

_if nothing could change_

_stuck in a world with no name_

_would you give me a chance?_

_would you take my hand?_

_a hundred of me_

_all want to break free_

_one of them is shouting, one of them is dreaming_

_a million other lives_

_all just within reach_

_do i reach a hand, or do i leave them be_

_at the same time in another universe_

_i wanna be the one who puts you first_

_i want you to be mine_

_wouldn’t that be nice?_

_right now in a world so far away_

_i tell you what i’m scared to say_

_with your hands in mine_

_then we’ll be just fine_

_look up to polaris_

_let her shine her light_

_let her bring her truth_

_make sure you’re not alone in the night_

_if you’ve never tried it once_

_maybe you’ve tried it a million times_

_look up to polaris_

_she is so full of life_

_at the same time in another universe_

_i wanna be the one who puts you first_

_i want you to be mine_

_wouldn’t that be nice?_

_right now in a world so far away_

_i tell you what i’m scared to say_

_with your hands in mine_

_then we’ll be just fine_

_at the same time (at the same time)_

_in another universe (another universe)_

**track 7 - insomnia** (hello, anxiety)

**track 8 - assume** (cough syrup)

**track 9 - impulse** (still feel)

**track 10 - people as they are** (buttercup)

**track 11 - je t'aime** (work)

POLARIS TOUR:

**track 1 - susie save your love**

**track 2 - house of the rising sun**

**track 3 - sunflower vol. 6**

**track 4 - hit the back**

**track 5 - are you bored yet?**

**track 6 - i wanna be yours**

**track 7 - one**

**track 8 - ribs**

**track 9 - wildflower**

**track 10 - amazing grace**

**track 11 - california friends**

**track 12 - underwater snow**

**track 13 - lover of mine**

**track 14 - take yourself home**

**track 15 - out of touch**

**track 16 - fifteen minutes of fame**

lyrics:

_fifteen_

_fifteen minutes_

_fifteen_

_fifteen_

_fifteen minutes_

_fifteen_

_woke up in a different city with the same friends_

_thinking about how people said this would all end_

_seven, eight, nine, short, long, years fly by_

_and i’m still in heaven_

_i’m soaring through the sky_

_iridescent lights flashing colors in my eyes_

_bass beats feeding through my soul_

_keep me alive_

_call out for my sister_

_she’s doing just fine_

_call out for each other_

_find a way to land on solid_

_ground_

_and you were around_

_we’re never coming down_

_ooh, ooh, ooh_

_fifteen minutes, fifteen minutes of fame_

_who am i, and who are you, are we the same?_

_my minutes in heaven_

_turned out to be alright_

_‘cause i’m still climbing_

_to a deeper, darker light_

_if the story never ends_

_if the truth is untold_

_if our smiles are pretend_

_if we stand up and never fold_

_can we be free?_

_you and me?_

_no in between_

_between the life that i’ve got_

_and all the times i’ve fought_

_i swear, i really swear i’m not_

_a fraud, against all odds_

_but who am i to say_

_i’m just another kid who found a home in his_

_fame_

_we’ll stay the same_

_a little family of shame_

_ooh, ooh, ooh_

_fifteen minutes, fifteen minutes of fame_

_who am i, and who are you, are we the same?_

_my minutes in heaven_

_turned out to be alright_

_‘cause we’re still climbing_

_to a brighter shade of night_

_do all these voices even make a_

_sound_

_all my friends are still_

_around?_

_fifteen minutes, fifteen minutes of fame_

_did we make it there?_

_how many minutes remain?_

SAPPHO'S LOST LOVE LETTERS:

**track 1 - sappho**

**track 2 - girls**

**track 3 - melting**

**track 4 - tattooed heart**

**track 5 - exist for love**

**track 6 - tonight**

**track 7 - wisconsin ave**

**track 8 - mercy/gatekeeper**

**track 9 - homegirl**

**track 10 - it's nice to have a friend**

**track 11 - clementine**

GIRL OF THE YEAR:

**track 1 - not so bad in la**

**track 2 - successful**

**track 3 - nobody**

**track 4 - BITCH (takes one to know one)**

**track 5 - nightmare**

**track 6 - cliff's edge**

**track 7 - physical**

**track 8 - false god**

**track 9 - pussy is god**

**track 10 - s.l.u.t.**

**track 11 - perfect places**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr @kieunora !! 
> 
> original songs: https://soundcloud.com/user-22686361/sets/smih-songz-babey/s-U0X5DKFp6F7
> 
> fifteen minutes of fame: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3v77Gn5SFXQiFMtSeS5OHp?si=3d0f8ba935364c30
> 
> le premier: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4slfnz52m9SKPy6eGNzDxd?si=0f417d6ec27d4802
> 
> minute by minute: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6NT3SWr6RXwppJkW3A9rlX?si=45c4eb881cf3485f
> 
> mxm tour: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0NudhosXvaSZu3fF6dp8Yl?si=2888cc30b06d4432
> 
> polaris: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2eukKALCs6AZO1OHZDetHF?si=2dbc0d2860934f57
> 
> polaris tour: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3WFHo9RCod6bep4BL4m1kY?si=06c029e5241b4095
> 
> sappho's lost love letters: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1rYxkOwFI2n6vrkOm2eKLZ?si=a7e86a8e717346cf
> 
> girl of the year: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3FWvDFhyCp5RaxSIH60cXe?si=701365f401054395


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